ZERO TOLERANCE

I don’t like jumping on bandwagons but as I have been bombarded with news reports, commentary and statistics on bullying, I feel compelled to jump in here. Especially since Strycker’s Bay provides after school programming for more than 200 children each school day.

First of all I must offer full disclosure here. I was bullied in elementary school from the time I was in third grade until I graduated the sixth grade. I attended PS 75 on West 96^th Street and West End Avenue from 1967 to 1972.  The last three years of school where torture. I never wanted to go to school and spent a good part of my day dodging those who thought it was necessary to pick on me unprovoked.

What I want to point out here is that victims of bullying are not only physically and verbally abused, they are abused emotionally because they are targeted for no apparent reason. I think this is what makes bullying so harmful and makes children feel helpless. They can not make sense of their perpetrators actions. They can’t understand what it is they have done to make someone obsessively target them for harm. Getting into an argument or disagreement on the playground that results in a physical fight or exchange of verbal insults can be made sense of, and shouldn’t be confused with bullying. Those situations can be mediated and diffused.

Perpetrators or bullies have another agenda which only makes sense to them and can not be mediated because there goal is to make their victim powerless. Are children who bully evil? No. But they need to be dealt with and their victim’s pleas for intervention should not be ignored.

When I was ten years old, one of the school bullies (I still remember her name to this day) arbitrarily targeted me. She came to my classroom door, knocked on the window and let me know that I needed to watch out at 3 o’clock. I didn’t even know her. Her threats, taunts and physical attacks haunted me everyday. But one day I lost it. I went to the Vice-Principal’s office and told him and his assistant what was going on. I was crying and telling them that I needed them to help me. They told me to ignore her. Frustrated, I stormed out of their office. They ordered me to return to the office. I screamed at the top of my lungs in the school hall “YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO PROTECT ME!” and proceeded to run down the three flights of stairs to the school’s entrance and burst out of the school building with adults calling after me. I went straight home feeling outrage that the adults who are charged with keeping order in the school building would tell me to ignore this bully’s threats of physical harm especially since she had followed through on them before. I was not making a big deal out of a small matter.

The message here is that there must be a ZERO TOLERANCE for bullying on the part of the adults in charge. Period.

At Strycker’s Bay’s youth program LACASA, there is zero tolerance for bullying, fighting, and targeting others for teasing and taunts. If children engage in that type of behavior, they are called on it immediately and we discuss it with them. We work to teach them the impact their taunts and bullying has on others,  themselves and the overall program

This approach has made LACASA the safe place it has been for over 18 years. If children do not feel safe how can they learn? How can they feel free to express themselves, explore and learn about the world around them, if the have to constantly look over their shoulder  to make sure their perpetrator isn’t sitting and waiting to pounce.

Teachers, counselors and parents, we have an obligation to create an atmosphere for learning that is safe and promotes freedom of expression and individuality. Children must learn early on to embrace the differences in others.

I met one of the parents of a new LACASA kid last Friday in the supermarket. He asked me how everything was going and then proceeded to tell me that LACASA is one of the reasons his daughter gets up to go to school everyday. I am proud to say that we have been able to create a place of inclusiveness. LACASA kids do not have to worry about anything other than…”do we have soccer today?” I had to worry if I was going to get out of school early enough to escape the wrath and rage of the angry little girl who made me her target for verbal and physical harm.

Until the next post,

Kelley