Fort Bragg Advocate-News Staff Writer
The towering restored 1930s speakers at Cotton Auditorium boomed 2012 hits like “We are Young” by the band “Fun.” Teachers, some who wore special Chuck Taylor sneakers decorated with sparkles, hopped on the grand old stage to dance in a flashmob. Kids were surprised, laughed hard and joined in, soon almost everybody was dancing. Nearly every kid was talking and even smiling when leaving the auditorium on Monday which isn”t typically the case following afternoon assembly at a middle school.
The occasion that brought the Monday afternoon all-school assembly? School-wide testing day on Tuesday.
Fort Bragg Middle School Principal Donna Miller explained its all part of positive efforts to help kids overcome the many stresses of those painful early teen years of passage.
“In this environment, nobody is judging and dancing is the kind of thing that can really build positive confidence,” said Miller.
Miller who joined the dance jam in her own sparkly high tops, credits a consistent new positive curriculum with helping reduce bullying one of the worst experiences for many “survivors” of the middle school years.
Five years ago, the Fort Bragg Middle School adopted the PBIS (Positive Behavior Intervention Support) program. Statistics used to measure bullying show a downward turn over the past five years; Dana Gray Elementary implemented the program three years ago.
Carla Leach of the Mendocino County Youth Project has helped with designing the curriculum.
“Fighting or physical aggression is more prevalent at Dana Gray than at the Middle School, I believe partially because the middle school is further along in the implementation of our school-wide positive behavior support program and possibly the age of the students,” said Superintendent Don Armstrong.
A student who does something positive, like pick up a piece of paper another student has thrown down after drying his hands, is liable to get issued a ticket issued by Dana Gray or Middle School employees. Those tickets are used for praise and drawings at least once per week for prizes like basketballs, baseball gloves or other fun stuff designed to encourage exercise and going outdoors.
There are regular programs at both schools to teach and reinforce positive behavior. At the Middle School, students give up one day of math class per week to participate in the program. There is another after-school program at Dana Gray that also helps.
The curriculum does not use the word bullying, in an effort to be entirely positive. It defines respectful behavior, then teaches the expectations based on situations encountered by the students.
If an incident occurs on the soccer field, for example, students are asked if what happened was respectful, how a person defines respect. When teachers see something that falls into the category of disrespect or harassment, they check a box, with blanks for both major and minor incidents.
Bullying is, of course, not a recent phenomenon, but has been made worse by technology, where youngsters can reach out to tease, humiliate or harass on sites like Facebook.
“Another aspect of this issue is the cyber-bullying that occurs on social media. For the most part we do see the fallout from this, but since cell phone [use is] not allowed in use on campus, we only hear about it the next day,” said Armstrong.
Is bullying worse than it used to be?
Dana Gray Principal Lupe Merritt feels foul language is worse today and she credits that and some other behavior problems with too much time on the Internet, phone and TV and not enough time outside getting healthy exercise.
The essence of the program at both schools is more positive reinforcement like providing a fun dance assembly for the whole school, rather than old fashioned and stressful “cramming” sessions before testing.
Miller credits the work of long-time Assistant Principal Chuck Allegrini with much of the progress. She says everyone at the school knows that safety is her top priority.
“If students do not feel safe, they don”t want to learn,” she said.
The Middle School and Dana Gray haven”t yet seen a downturn in bullying statistics. Merritt says the intense training and positive behavior reinforcement has brought greater recognition and reporting of behaviors that can lead to bullying. She says the program has made a big difference and expects numbers to decline as the program proceeds.
Although bullying is actually not one of the words used in the program nor in the statistics, they are used to measure it through incidents of behaviors like disrespect. (Bad language is defined as disrespect.) Bullying is the problem that has prompted districts all over the nation to implement such programs, it is recognized and defined by administrators.
“The statistics that we do keep puts bullying under the heading of harassment, but we also keep track of many of the associated behaviors such as fighting, disrespect, etc,” Armstrong said.
“The Dana Gray data shows that harassment is 4.24 percent of our referrals, with disrespect/defiance being by far the biggest category at 18.26 percent. At the middle school the percentage is more like 1.33 percent compared to disrespect at 28 percent.”
The PBIS is a nationwide program, which is up to school districts to adopt. Online studies and data show that by devoting a few hours to the program schools recover many more time lost to classrooms disruptions and discipline problems.
For more information, check out the website, http://www.pbis.org/.
