ÌìÃÀÊÓƵ

People often view bullying and harassment as things that happen somewhere else. But both are real problems in Hawaii and they aren’t going away on their own.

“It may just recently have drawn a lot of national and local attention, but bullying has been around,” explained Carla Lum, a peer mediation counselor at in Wahiawa.

Teachers and students can make the biggest difference in discouraging bullying. But without training, many are unprepared to recognize signs of bullying or respond to them. Read a related story about the Hawaii Department of Education‘s failure to implement a department-wide anti-bullying program.

Student surveys indicate that bullying remains a problem.

Nearly 8 percent of high school students in Hawaii said they skipped school at least one day last year because they felt unsafe at school, according to a conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That was 2 percent higher than the national average. The survey includes private school students.

Nearly 20 percent of students surveyed nationally reported being bullied on school property at least once. There were no Hawaii results reported for that question, but more than 10 percent of Hawaii’s high school students said they had gotten into a physical fight on school property at least once.

Almost 13 percent said they had attempted suicide at least once. That’s more than twice the national average, 6.3 percent. Suicide often stems from social isolation and depression resulting from harassment, said Antonia Alvarez, director of ‘s youth suicide and bullying prevention program.

Almost 19 percent of high schoolers in Hawaii said they have seriously considered attempting suicide, according to the survey — a rate seven percent higher than the national average. Sixteen percent said they had made a plan for attempting suicide — six percent higher than the national average. ( to view comprehensive national results from the survey.)

Peer Mediation

Lum has started a successful mediation program at Leilehua, in which 15 carefully selected students are trained to mediate disputes among their peers in the presence of a trained counselor. Students being disciplined for harassment are strongly encouraged to take part in them, but it’s not required.

“This is not only intervention, which mediation is, but you can train your students to be educators,” Lum said. “We’re using our own resources here — our own kids. And our mediators are learning and they’re paying that forward and teaching the other students, so it’s very cost-effective, and it’s another support service to our team.”

Several schools and complexes have expressed a desire to emulate Leilehua’s peer mediation program, but it requires a full-time counselor doing just that, Lum said. Some schools don’t have the financial resources to allocate to such a program.

Here are some common symptoms and solutions from local educators.

Causes and Targets

The targets of school bullying are usually students who stand out somehow, Alvarez said.

They could be bad at playing a sport, they could have a physical disability, they might look different, be smarter than their classmates, have an unusual religious background or they may have a different sexual orientation than most of their peers. All of those factors depend on the school’s individual culture, said Lum, the peer mediation counselor. But students who are targeted at one school may not be targeted at another.

Some bullying may originate from what seems at first to be harmless teasing.

“I had a case where a student was being teased about his ears being too large,” Lum said. “This was going on for a while and he just couldn’t take it anymore. Kids poke fun at them and then it gets out of hand.”

Bullies are empowered by real or perceived power imbalances, Alvarez said.

“I think it’s about control,” Lum said. “Bullies have their own agendas, their own desires and they lack empathy. I think they have a difficult time putting themselves in other people’s shoes or seeing from another person’s perspective.”

Signs, Even in Kindergarten

Bullying can range from spreading rumors about others and verbally taunting them to physically abusing them. It occurs in every school age group — even in kindergarten classrooms, where Alvarez said she has seen racial bullying that was encouraged by parents.

“Bullying is different in the way it plays out in each age group,” she explained. “In elementary schools it’s hitting and it’s verbal.”

After elementary school, bullying often becomes more about social isolation and psychological intimidation.

“By middle school, it’s getting to a level where it can be very extreme and very constant. In a way, I think middle school bullying may be the most damaging, because the kids at that age are very vulnerable and are just starting to define themselves. By high school, many kids have already fallen into their social roles, and it’s not about calling somebody a jerk anymore, and it becomes more extreme and much more emotional. You see kids beginning to play with people’s weaknesses or fears.”

In middle and high school grades, Alvarez said there is also a tremendous surge in cyber-bullying, which takes place online and off school grounds but can have devastating effects on its victims.

Effects

Bullying of all types can cause anxiety, depression and even health problems in its victims.

“For some individuals it can lead to serious health issues,” Lum said. “It may begin to effect their sleeping and eating patterns, and there was a case at Waianae High School where a student was vomiting and wanted to quit school.”

Students’ academic performance can suffer, too, she said. Some students may miss classes or be so distracted that they can’t focus on their studies.

But probably most chilling is the connection between bullying and suicide. Six Massachusetts teenagers are for bullying Phoebe Prince, a 15-year-old student who hanged herself in January.

Zero-tolerance and Teacher Training

Teachers have the most exposure to students and therefore the most opportunities to see signs of harassment among them. Some schools and even some entire complexes have strong prevention programs, Alvarez said. But the absence of a systemwide anti-bullying curriculum in Hawaii’s schools has left many teachers unprepared to recognize the signs of bullying or to respond to them.

Alvarez explained that they often either:

• Miss the signs
• Dismiss them
• Or avoid confronting them

Teachers need in-service training so they know how to recognize what is going on, Alvarez said. They need to keep abreast of slang terms and insults, and they need to be familiar with the technology students often use to bully one another.

But perhaps the most significant obstacle to an effective anti-bullying culture in Hawaii’s schools is that classmates, teachers and even administrators often don’t take it seriously enough.

“The biggest problem I think probably across the board is people not wanting to get involved,” Alvarez said. “A lot of times they won’t get involved because they think it’s not a big deal or that it’s too big a deal.”

But schools must have a zero-tolerance policy on bullying if they want to quash it, she said. That means students have to stand up for themselves, classmates need to step in and defend their peers, and everyone — including parents and teachers — needs to report incidents of bullying.

“The key is not to become passive bystanders,” Alvarez said. “Even if what you do is small or after the fact.”

Free Resources

Even without funding for a full-time counselor, though, Alvarez said there are lots of free programs and resources that schools can begin using immediately. A few were mentioned by those who testified at the Oct. 7 school board meeting:

• by Mental Health America of Hawaii. Alvarez has shared the project with at least 1,000 students in both public and private schools this year.
• , a project of the Southern Poverty Law Center
.
• , a project of Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays.