During the last school year, children in elementary and secondary schools in Seattle crowded into their auditoriums, buzzing with the excitement of a non-routine assembly. The guest actors for the day put on a show, “Don’t Tell Jessica.” As the story unfolded, the students begin to notice similarities between what Jessica experienced and what some of them were experiencing every day: harassment through social media and texting.
Late last winter, Coe Elementary was one of those schools that saw the play and may see a new one this year with a similar message.
Scott Nolte, Taproot Theater Company’s producing artistic director, said the company tours with shows, like “Don’t Tell Jessica,” to help elementary and secondary students see different perspectives and reactions to social and emotional behavior. About 10 years ago, he said the company responded to a need for a program about bullying and harassment.
“Schools and parents were concerned [bullying] was getting out of hand and didn’t have a framework to address it,” Nolte explained. “We considered how we could approach this issue in a dramatic way so the children in the audience could see their scenarios on stage and see how each of them is affected by bullying.”
The notorious bullying of bus monitor Karen Klein in Greece, N.Y., again brings up the topic. Nolte said today’s society seems to be more divisive and hateful because no one is compromising or listening. The behavior — motivated by race, sex or religion — becomes vicious in middle and high school, especially with new technology, he said.
“Being verbally abusive to someone you don’t agree with is almost common,” Nolte said. “Take that down a step to our children, and they are seeing this and acting it out in the same way.”
For this school year, Taproot will tour with “Friend Me,” which, cuing off the latest technology, will focus much more on cyber-bullying, according to Suzanne Townsend, Taproot’s Education and Outreach Associate. There will be one version for elementary schools — “it’s more about providing tools to recognize and prevent bullying behavior,” she said — and one for secondary schools, which focuses “on peer accountability and holding people responsible for their behaviors.”
Townsend said, with classrooms back in session, the city’s schools will begin booking dates for “Friend Me.”
Learning from others
Nolte said reality shows like “American Idol” and “Jersey Shore” contribute to the problem because they reward competition at the expense of someone else’s dignity.
The theater company used the reality show “Survivor” in an earlier production because it was popular at the time. The physical and emotional abuse present in the reality show gave a perfect platform to show students the dangers of bullying behavior, he said.
“Children are learning that it is OK to behave this way and are possibly becoming more violent and belligerent,” Nolte said. “We have to figure out how to help the kids realize that the life and world around us would be much better if we listened and respected each other.”
Taproot Theater works in conjunction with the Committee for Children, also based in Seattle, to develop curriculum for their programs, Nolte said. The committee provides researched methods and discussion questions to properly teach the students about proper social and emotional behavior, he said.
Mia Doces, the senior programs and media specialist for the Committee for Children, said the 30-year-old nonprofit works with students in pre-kindergarten through eighth grade and focuses on education and advocacy for child safety and well-being.
In at least 70 different countries, the agency supplies a social-emotional learning curriculum for educators and schools. Children learn how to develop empathy, regulate their emotions, solve problems and take different perspectives with the help of the organization’s lessons, she said.
“Our program works on the foundation of a story,” Doces explained. “Our curriculum has children practice with situations, like wanting to join a soccer game. From this, they learn what skills it would take to ask to join and practice in the lesson.”
Part of teaching the children involves video links and homework activities for their parents, Doces said: Bullying and other problems cannot be resolved if the parents immediately deny a problem. If all of the adults in a community work together, positive language and social skills can be reinforced both at home and at school, she said.
“Inviting others to play, making friends, handling conflict — these skills are foundational and are steps to respect,” Doces said. “We’ve also found these skills are useful in how to recognize, report and refuse bullying and how to be a positive bystander who doesn’t make the problem worse.”
Doces said the teachers and specialists who work with the Committee for Children’s curriculum receive special training for dealing with bullying situations. For example, it is inappropriate to put a victimized child face-to-face with the bully to work things out.
Overall, the process for helping children achieve socially and academically is a long-term commitment by the students, teachers and parents, she said.
New challenges
While children still bully to gain attention from peers and to prove something, youth violence is actually decreasing, Doces said. The bullying problem is not new, but the methods — like cyber bullying and video — present new challenges.
She said the media coverage of these issues also makes situations like the bullying of New York bus monitor Karen Klein more alarming.
“Any kind of bullying story you hear in the media, you are only hearing a small bit of a much bigger story,” Doces said. “You have to consider the situation, the families and the children.”
Social behavior in other countries presents problems just like it does in the United States, Doces said. Currently, she is creating a bullying-prevention curriculum for children in kindergarten through third grade, and she works with international advisers to mold the information to each cultural style. Some countries have more problems with violence, and some simply don’t have a government and media who are focused on the issues, she said.
“Some countries are just trying to make sure kids get to school safely,” Doces said. “It depends on the country.”
According to a 2009 “Crime in America” report, two-thirds of recent U.S. school shootings were committed by bullied youths. The University of Washington, in an effort to curb bullying behavior, performed a three-month study involving students in grades three to six at six Seattle Public Schools. It implemented the Committee for Children’s Steps to Respect prevention program into students’ curriculum, and as a result, in the area of malicious gossip, there was a 72-percent decrease.
Susan M. Swearer, a University of Nebraska-Lincoln professor of school psychology and licensed psychologist, said in comparison to the bullying situation involving bus monitor Karen Klein, most children would not act in that manner. The viral video depicting the incident shows the disrespectful behavior to the world, but people who feel entitled to belittle are not new to society, she said.
“We have a ton of examples of these type of behaviors — think about discrimination in the South, slavery, abuse and neglect,” Swearer said.
New media and technology introduce an issue of privacy to social behavior, Swearer said; a sense of entitlement is an underlying psychological characteristic for antisocial behavior, like bullying and aggressive tendencies.
“Youths who display antisocial behaviors feel entitled to do so; however, they felt entitled 50 years ago, just like they feel entitled today,” she said. “I’ve done research on conduct disordered youths and bullying behaviors for the past 20 years. and this connection isn’t “new” — it’s just getting more attention.”
Seattle Public Schools has an anti-bullying resource page at www.seattleschools.org/modules/cms/pages.phtml?sessionid