Seattle schools may not be quite as scary as they were

It could have been the anti-bullying assemblies, the class discussions or the daily "we all belong" message broadcast over Denny Middle School's public-address system that had the 14-year-old's behavior weighing on his conscience.

So one day in early April, Long approached a smaller, quiet boy who had frequently been the target of his ridicule.

"He looked deathly afraid of me, and I just told him that I'm not going to bully him anymore," Long said. "I told him there's no point in it, and I apologized for it."

Long went further, admonishing a friend to stop verbally abusing another student. The friend stopped, he said.

It's that sort of ripple effect that Seattle Public Schools was striving for when it launched an anti-bullying program in district schools last fall. The Olweus Bullying Prevention Program was developed by Norwegian professor Dan Olweus after three teen bullying victims in the Scandinavian country committed suicide in 1983.

Its three-tiered intervention model requires schools to administer an anonymous questionnaire about bullying and form a committee of administrators, teachers, students, parents and an on-site coordinator.

It recommends developing a set of rules to prevent bullying and a coordinated system of supervision during lunch hours, holding regular classroom meetings about bullying, and meeting individually with bullies, their targets and parents.

The model aims to overhaul the culture of schools to one that not only no longer ignores bullying, but actively discourages it.

Officials have not completed collection of bullying data on a districtwide basis. Though the initiative is still in the early days in Seattle schools, educators say it shows signs of achieving its mission.

Ginger Moriarty, a mental health counselor in Denny Middle School's wellness center, said the program has a greater chance of success than others because it provides guidelines for long-term changes, rather than simply prescribing a specific curriculum.

"The problem with programs like that is that they're really great when they're first implemented, but then it inevitably slacks off because of how busy everybody is," she said.

Dwane Martinson, a sixth-grade teacher at Hamilton International Middle School, estimates that the number of reported bullying incidents at the school has risen about 12 percent since last fall.

He attributes the change to increased willingness among staff and students to speak out about harassment.

One day shortly before the winter break, he said, a group of students stood up to the school's prime bully and prevented him from beating up another boy. Since then there haven't been any bullying complaints about the boy, who Martinson said has largely been deserted by his sidekicks.

Students are "no longer just letting it happen," he said. "They're getting involved. They want to make sure something's done."

Hamilton has promoted its anti-bullying message by holding door-decorating and poster contests, and flagging written reports of bullying incidents with a large red "B" so they can be added to a spreadsheet and tracked. It installed a locked wooden "hot box" where students can leave anonymous reports without fear of recrimination, and boosted patrols of the school's more isolated areas.

"We've had really good feedback from the kids," Martinson said. "The students have bought into it, and the staff have."

Two years ago, the state passed legislation requiring every Washington school district to enact an anti-bullying policy and report the number of incidents annually.

Terry Chadsey, who manages Seattle Public Schools' Communities That Care project -- aimed at promoting positive youth development and preventing detrimental behaviors -- said city schools have implemented anti-bullying initiatives in the past, but nothing as comprehensive as the Olweus program.

The district considered other programs, he said, but the Olweus model stood out as the best tool, partly because of the extensive research done by its namesake.

Olweus "really redefined" the understanding of bullying, Chadsey said, and debunked popular misconceptions about the problem -- for example, that bullies are invariably children with low self-esteem, and that bullying is a normal part of childhood.

"We've all heard that kids do that, get used to it," he said. "And we in effect isolate those who are targeted by bullies. Our own data and data elsewhere show that huge numbers of kids who are bullied never tell anybody.

"The point of this work is to shift the culture among adults and kids to step in and stop bullying, and to isolate those who are bullying rather than those who are victimized."

MIDDLE-SCHOOLERS AND BULLIES

A recent survey of Seattle middle school students found that:

15 percent of sixth-graders, 13 percent of seventh-graders and 12 percent of eighth-graders said they were bullied at least two or three times a month.

Of those bullied regularly, almost half of seventh-graders, 41 percent of eighth-graders and 29 percent of sixth-graders didn't tell anyone about the bullying.

Almost half of eighth-graders -- 46 percent -- said they were bullied at least once a year. Among sixth- and seventh-graders, the figure was 31 percent and 35 percent, respectively.

29 percent of sixth-graders, 23 percent of seventh-graders and 21 percent of eighth-graders are afraid of being bullied.

5 percent of sixth-graders, 7 percent of seventh-graders and 9 percent of ninth-graders said they have bullied other students at least two or three times a month.

Half of sixth-graders, 41 percent of seventh-graders and 37 percent of eighth-graders said that teachers or other adults at school "often" or "almost always" try to stop bullying when they see it.

Source: Seattle Public Schools

P-I reporter Deborah Bach can be reached at 206-448-8197 or deborahbach@seattlepi.com

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