An Altoona Area School District security vehicle sits at a crosswalk along Eighth Avenue behind the junior high building as students are dismissed. Mirror photo by Patrick Waksmunski
Bullying has been an issue for generations, but some recent incidents among Altoona Area School District students is shining a spotlight on the problem.
In October, a junior high student was assaulted on his way home from school by three other students, leaving him bloodied and at the hospital with a broken nose and other injuries, his family told the Mirror.
Jessica Sipe heard about the incident, and she, too, called the Mirror to talk about some her children had witnessed in school.
“My daughter and son came home every day telling me, ‘I saw another kid get jumped’ or ‘I saw another kid get hit,'” Sipe said.
School district officials said they are aware of various altercations among students but are unable to speak directly about individual incidents, which puts the district at a disadvantage.
Assistant Superintendent Brad Hatch said it’s hard to give both sides of the story when the district can’t speak explicitly on certain incidents, but he promised that the district keeps a close eye on any conflict or worrying communication between students.
The grandfather of the 13-year-old who ended up with a broken nose told the Mirror that it wasn’t the first run-in with bullies the student encountered.
Don Bowers said at the time that he understands the district can’t prevent every instance of bullying, but if the district has a “no-tolerance” approach to bullying, he wants more accountability and action.
Sipe thinks the district isn’t doing enough and decided to take her children out of school after hearing about incidents her children witnessed. One took place in the locker room right in front of her daughter, Sipe claimed.
“A girl walked into the locker room, grabbed another girl by the hair, and repeatedly punched her in the face in front of everybody,” Sipe said.
Sipe said her children were afraid to walk around the school by themselves out of fear of something similar happening to them, leading to her decision to pull them out of school. She was planning to enroll her children in the Altoona Cyber Academy.
She said her interactions with the school district have gotten her nowhere and the responses she has received have not always been agreeable in her eyes.
Procedures in place
While unable to address Bowers’ and Sipe’s complaints directly, Hatch said the district has multiple procedures in place to address harassment and bullying.
“The last thing we want is for a conflict to end in a physical altercation or verbal altercation or someone feeling like they are being harassed or bullied,” Hatch said.
In an effort to keep ahead of any potential problems, the district has a monitoring system across all its electronic devices and cloud networks to look for specific language and negative interactions sent between students. Hatch said he gets hundreds of notifications throughout the day to check on issues that the system flags.
The district has programs and lesson plans in place at the elementary level to promote healthy relationships and discourage bullying.
Haley Fleegle, assistant to the superintendent for curriculum, instruction and elementary programs, said it’s a joint effort between classroom teachers and the counseling departments in the schools.
Because elementary students are connected to electronic devices, too, those schools have also added device monitoring.
“They are getting flagged for anything they are putting out there on their device,” she said.
At the junior high and high school level, Hatch said within just two hours, “I have had at least five different concerns that I have gotten digitally that I have pushed out to a guidance counselor (to) ‘see this kid immediately.'”
‘Pile on effect’
Daniel Francis Perkins, Penn State professor of youth and family resiliency, said while bullying has been an issue for generations, it is possible the uptick at this time of year can be blamed in part on the holiday season and the prospect of spending more time at home in uncomfortable environments.
“You’re not going to have as much potential control in your family situation, then where can you get control?” Perkins asked. “Well, you might try to get it in your school situation.”
Perkins was careful to say there is not just one root cause for — seeming rise in — bullying.
He said it’s more of a “pile-on effect” of multiple factors over time.
He said the COVID-19 pandemic likely also has a hand in the current tension between students, because the students were in potentially unhealthy environments at home for so long last year and into the beginning of this year. That would lead the students to lash out upon returning back to school in an effort to regain control of their lives and release that frustration and other pent-up emotions.
Hatch said that was definitely the case at the beginning of the school year as students came back to school, but it hasn’t been as much of a factor in the last couple months.
Coping skills
According to Hatch, the district is trying to establish a climate for students where they feel safe to interact and to report any issues, rather than strictly focusing on how to punish bullying and other conflict.
Perkins said that is the smarter approach to combat bullying, saying that it has been proven more effective in several case studies.
“You can certainly target the bullies, but that’s not going to solve the problem,” Perkins said. “You really have to think about prevention — what’s the root cause? It’s really about shifting culture.”
Drew Yingling, Altoona Area chairman of the school counseling department, said that even before the pandemic, the school had been working on helping students develop coping skills.
“One of the things we’re trying to focus on is social and emotional learning,” Yingling said. The aim is to educate and instill in students the social and conflict resolution skills needed to successfully navigate the teen years.
Ultimately, Hatch said the district can’t guarantee the absolute safety of each student in terms of being able to make sure they avoid any altercation across their time in the district, since it takes effort on the students’ parts as well. But he said he believes the district has the programs in place to help students succeed and make any possible negative interactions last as short a time as possible.
“We are not naive to think that we will completely eliminate student conflict, because as long as we are human, that will likely continue to occur as kids are maturing,” Hatch said. “But we need to do as much as we can to instill in them skills to resolve their differences and their conflicts in a positive way.”
Concerning incidents outside the school buildings, Hatch said students don’t always take the advice given to them by teachers, staff and counselors.
One student was not heading in the direction of home when he encountered a group of students and an altercation occurred, Hatch said.
“Sometimes they just don’t take our advice,” he said. “There’s always multiple sides to the story and we try to do as much as we can proactively to never get to the point where a situation like that occurs.”
Mirror Staff Writer Nate Powles is at 814-946-7466.
"conflict" - Google News
December 13, 2021 at 12:37PM
https://ift.tt/3IGh6NY
Resolving conflict | News, Sports, Jobs - Altoona Mirror
"conflict" - Google News
https://ift.tt/3bZ36xX
https://ift.tt/3aYn0I8
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "Resolving conflict | News, Sports, Jobs - Altoona Mirror"
Post a Comment