Equipping students with effective tools to handle bullying is crucial for fostering a safe and supportive school environment. Today, we delve into two innovative anti-bullying programs implemented in Cobb County schools: "Stop, Walk, Talk" for elementary students and "Expect Respect" for middle and high schoolers. Join our host, David Owen, as he engages with Kelly McNabb, Director of Cobb's Student Assistance Programs, and Joslin Maxwell, Wellness Specialist, who share valuable insights on how these programs empower students to advocate for themselves and their peers. Together, they discuss the importance of fostering empathy, understanding the dynamics of bullying, and the role of bystanders in creating a culture of respect. Tune in to learn how these initiatives not only address bullying but also teach vital life skills that help children navigate social interactions throughout their lives.

Guests:

• Kelly McNabb, Director of Student Assistance Programs
• Joslin Maxwell, Wellness Specialist

Chapters:

• [00:00] - Equipping Students to Deal with Bullies
• [02:26] - Understanding Bullying: Definitions and Dynamics
• [06:09] - Understanding Bullying and Its Impact
• [09:36] - The Role of Bystanders in Bullying Situations
• [13:56] - Bullying Prevention Resources and Programs
• [15:59] - Introduction to Bullying Prevention Programs

(If the timecode links above don't work in your podcast player, visit "Podcast Home" below.)

Useful links from the podcast:

• Cobb Shield - This page contains info about Vector Alert, a resource for reporting safety concerns.
• In-depth on School Safety with Chris Ragsdale - Part 2 - The Inside Scoop - This episode features Superintendent Chris Ragsdale discussing bullying prevention as a component of Cobb's comprehensive safety initiatives.
• Student Assistance Programs
• Positive School Culture Support

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The Cobb County School District

Takeaways:

• Bullying is a persistent issue in schools, and equipping students with coping tools is essential.
• Parents often feel deeply affected by bullying incidents involving their children, whether as victims or aggressors.
• The definition of bullying includes intentional harm, an imbalance of power, and a pattern of behavior.
• Empowering bystanders to intervene can significantly impact the dynamics of bullying situations.
• The Cobb School District implements programs like 'Stop, Walk, Talk' for elementary students to address bullying.
• Communication between parents and schools is crucial in managing and resolving bullying incidents effectively.

Equipping students to deal with bullies in Cobb is next on this episode of the Inside Scoop. Hello and welcome back to the Inside Scoop. I'm David Owen.

We strive to provide information here that can help your student reach their greatest level of success in KOP schools. If you hear something helpful, give us a quick like, subscribe and share it with a friend. Bullying is something that's been around forever.

Parents and even staff aren't always nearby to intervene. So equipping students with the tools to handle it is important.

Here to tell us more about how Cobb helps students handle bullies are Kelly McNabb, director of Cobb's student assistance programs, and Joslin Maxwell, wellness specialist. Ladies, welcome to the podcast.

Thank you, David.

So, like we said, bullying is just one of those things that's been around forever. And parents, it seems like it hits a nerve if they find out their child was bullied.

And it even hits a nerve with a lot of parents if they find out their child did the bullying. So where do you think that comes from? Why are parents so offended when something like bullying happens?

Well, as a parent of an 11 year old daughter, she is in the Cobb County School District, I don't ever want her to, to be hurt or to be sad or feel discomfort. And I think that's just kind of the times we try to protect our children to the best we can.

And especially when, you know, there's a conflict between them and a friend, it is personal because you want to help them solve it, but then you also don't want to step in so much. So they don't learn how to solve their own problems. So it very much is a balance and it can be a struggle.

And especially if that, if bullying has happened to you in the past, then you very well would take that very personally and feel that for your child.

Yeah.

And then on the flip side, you have your, if your child is the one distributing, demonstrating, excuse me, some bullying behaviors, then also, like, I don't want my child to be the person who is hurting someone else or, you know, causing harm. So like you said, it's that balance and it's that struggle as a parent to just want the best for your children.

It's interesting how, how parents respond sometimes more dramatically than the child themselves. Right. So we've been talking about, we've been tossing around the term bullying. Is there an official definition of what bullying actually is? Joslin?

Yes, there is. And I'm going to put it in ways that I hope will make it easy for everyone to understand the bullying behavior would be purposeful.

So it's not something that just happens by accident, oh, I accidentally hurt your feelings or accidentally bumped into you. It's something that's intentional. Along with it being purposeful, there's also typically an imbalance of power.

So that power differential could be based on age, it could be based on size, it could be just based on kind of social sway. Right. Somebody kind of has a higher social status than another. Okay. So lots of different things could kind of play into that.

But there is that kind of difference in the power between the person that is targeting and then the person that's being targeted. Also, there is a pattern of behavior. So it's not usually just a one time occurrence. This is something that's happening repeatedly.

And so that pattern is showing up over time or over multiple days or weeks or months. And lastly, just some sort of pain is caused. So this can be a physical pain occurs.

A lot of times, I feel like we kind of think about that bullying in the movies or something like that as something that's happening in the hallway or with the lockers, or it can be a physical harm that's caused, but very often it's an emotional type of hurt that can be caused too. So someone is intentionally left out, somebody is intentionally teased. And in today's age, often this can even happen online.

Yeah. That's interesting that you brought that up because we hear of that fairly frequently. Right. I mean, kids don't just relate in the halls of schools.

They can still stay connected afterwards online.

What if you have a circumstance in which the person who is a victim or a target, really and truly, it's more of a hypersensitivity to an issue that somebody else might not find an offense. Is that something that's taken into account when considering whether bullying even happened?

Sure. And you bring up a really good point.

I know we're going to kind of get to some of the bullying programming that's happening in Cobb now, but the reason why I am such a supporter of both programs is because students are empowered to tell somebody to stop if they don't like the way that they're treating them. And so just like you, someone might not even realize that it's hurtful.

But this is then really teaching students to have a voice to advocate for themselves so that they can let someone know if they don't want them to continue saying what they're saying or they don't want them to continue doing what they're doing. So I feel like that life skill really goes kind of across the board relationally versus it just being bullying situations.

Yeah. So the alleged bully would then know, hey, that's a line that is not to be crossed for me. Even though you think it's just fine.

Also, our programs really are focused on expecting respect and on having a school wide language where everybody knows what the stop signal is, everybody knows what's expected of them.

And regardless if it's actually meeting the definition of bullying or not, we are expecting our students and our staff and our families to treat each other with respect.

Absolutely. So to that point, tell us more about the programs.

I understand that you've got one program for elementary age, I guess, and then middle and high school kind of together. Tell us more about who would be best to speak to that.

It would be Joslin.

It would be Joslin.

Okay.

So Stop, Walk and Talk is designed for our elementary school students.

And like Kelly just mentioned, at the elementary level, students are taught not only a stop phrase, and very often it's just simply something like stop. But schools are able to make it fit for, for what is best for their school community. So they can kind of customize that.

But there's also a signal that goes along with it. Some schools are doing a stop signal just with a hand raised. Some are doing kind of a timeout type of signal.

I was going to say that would be my go to.

And so even very young students or students that might have some limitations with language are able to communicate their needs through the stop signal.

And if they let somebody know they want them to stop what they're doing and they don't, then the next step is for them to walk away, kind of gain that proximity. That might just kind of diffuse the situation in and of itself.

But if they feel like it's still ongoing, then we're encouraging them to talk to an adult. So each student is kind of taught these steps if they happen to change. Cobb schools, the steps are really similar across the board.

So they know how to handle different conflicts as they come up, or like Kelly said, just situations that they don't feel are respectful when it comes to just kind of relational interactions.

Yeah, I like that. Cross school, we do have a lot of students that move from one school to the next not by their choice, but just parent jobs or what have you.

So that's very helpful. Right?

Yeah.

So that was the elementary level. Elementary. What about the upper levels? What are they equipped with? How do you Treat that the middle.

And high school students are learning about the program, Expect respect. The steps are really quite similar. Empowering the bystander is across all levels.

But I feel like maybe even more emphasized with middle and high, someone that's demonstrating bullying behavior very often is getting some peer support or some peer encouragement. And so when a peer steps in and also delivers that stop message, that can be really powerful.

The person that's demonstrating bullying behavior might be doing it to kind of raise their social status. And so if it's not well received, then that can be one of the best ways to change their behavior. At the middle and high level.

We also have students that are on an advisory council because we know that we want real student input.

We want to hear their honest voices about things that are happening, areas of concern, and then they can come up with their own plans supported by the staff at their schools, but that they can reach students directly. At a middle school. Recently we had their advisory council students distributing stickers of the Expect respect poster to every single student.

And so they went into the homerooms, they talked about the steps as a review, and then they helped them put the stickers on their laptops or their agendas so that students were hearing from other students about how important this is.

Yeah, you're right. I mean, when it comes to influence, adults can say all they want, but a peer saying something makes a big, big difference.

And that's interesting because we started this conversation talking about bully and victim or target, but it's the bystander that apparently has the most power in the situation, right?

Right.

Well, there's power in numbers.

And more students are going to fall into the camp of a bystander than the person demonstrating the bullying behavior or somebody receiving on that target end.

So if the majority of students feel comfortable jumping in and asking somebody to stop or talking to an adult on that targeted students behalf to get them help, that can make a real big difference in changing the behaviors towards what we want them to be respectful for.

All kind of makes a social norm.

It does. It really does.

So you got two sets of parents here, right? I've been on both sides of this. So I have an appreciation for the parents, of course, of the child who is being bullied or allegedly being bullied.

And then you've also got the parents of the child doing the bullying. Now, in most cases, those parents are not proud of their child's activity. Right.

So how can parents step in and intervene in a way that's effective and kind of team up with school leadership on helping to get things tamped down from this bullying situation.

I really believe that every hurtful incident and it doesn't matter which side of that situation you're on as far as target or the person that's hurting or harming, but every hurtful incident is a teachable moment.

So having parents or family members collaborate with school staff to talk about what happened and what could occur differently next time and how can we support each other and how can we be kinder.

I feel like just having those ongoing conversations if there was an incident that happened, but also continuing to talk about just what are social dynamics like as a preteen or a teen, keeping those open ended questions flowing. I feel like as an adult to be able to say, you know, what's your favorite part about riding the bus?

What's been the greatest challenge with getting along with your friends lately? Talking about things that are kind of in their life so that you know where the bumpy parts might be coming up even before an incident occurs.

But you might be able to equip them to be ready if something were to happen. And also a big believer in just role playing empathy as many times as possible because we know that's so beneficial for our kids.

So if somebody's thinking about kind of hurting to gain a little bit of power. Right. Really stopping to think about what's it like on that receiving end.

So we can do that with TV examples, just things that are happening in real life, things that might come up within our family or our neighborhood. But I think continually tapping into empathy is something that can really help a student to do the right thing.

Yeah. Just paying attention to how things are received. You started to say something, Kelly. I'm sorry.

And I was going to say also if you do hear that your child is being bullied, then making sure that you're working with the school teacher, you're working with the administration. And we also have a vector tip line in the district that you can report bullying.

But I would say starting with your child's teacher to discuss what are some ways that we can help them manage this situation so that they don't think they to handle it on their own and handle it in an inappropriate way.

So ideally handling it as close to the location, for example the school, is the ideal scenario. But it's interesting, I didn't even think of the vector tip line as being a resource available.

That doesn't necessarily mean the police are going to be storming the halls of the Right. So what happens in that scenario? Whoever receives that tip then Contacts, you guys or how does that work?

They would contact the school. They would do some investigating and contact the school if it was deemed necessary to do so.

But like I said, I strongly recommend starting with the school first.

Go direct. That always works. And if I may, I would recommend watching Back to the Future. I think that was a great lesson in how bullying should not happen.

Good reminder.

Sorry, just a little sidetracked.

You took it way back.

Yeah, way back to the Future. Okay, so where can parents learn more about these programs that you guys have launched?

Well, if you go into any of our schools, you should see these bullying prevention posters in our elementary schools. Again, stopwalk talk. That gives the details for what do you do if you're being bullied or if you see bullying occur.

And then also, of course, expect respect in our middle and high schools. And so you will see those posted throughout the. Also, you should check out our social media for the Cobb County School District.

Our post, we did a really cool bullying prevention poster contest for the month of October in conjunction with the visual arts department.

And so we had some very talented students across the district submit entries and you should see some of those being posted, well, a few weeks ago, until hopefully for the rest of the school year, of some really cool posters where they took the theme of the expect respect and stopwalk talk and they made it their own and how it touches them.

Yeah, I was going to say, I bet that's really insightful into what they themselves have experienced. Right? Wow. Well, this is all fascinating. Looking at it from the outside.

I'm glad I'm not still in middle school and bullying being a thing and the terminology, frankly, going back especially to the elementary years program. What was the name of it again?

Stop walk talk.

Okay. Those are all hard things for me. Parents can hear those terms and reemphasize them at home. Right.

I mean, just get that as kind of the standard way of thinking about how you respond to a bully.

And we have heard stories of some of our colleagues talking about their kids coming home and saying doing the stop signal, stop. Or putting their hand up to their siblings. So it is certainly being heard.

It's being understood by our students and we have first hand examples of that.

Okay. I would love to see a parent's response to that in the kitchen when two. Never mind.

Right, exactly.

Pulling too much on my personal experience. Well, thank you ladies for coming in and sharing so much about these two great programs.

These were just implemented, I guess this year, this school year.

We actually started implementation of these specific programs last year, but we have been doing bullying prevention in the district since I've been here for 24 years.

Okay. But these specific programs just essentially just rolled out. So, ladies, thank you so much for sharing about these two programs.

They are enormously helpful, I would think, for the students to have to be equipped with how to respond to these issues that it might feel like they're in over their heads on. So thank you so much for helping our students along in life.

Well, thank you for having us.

And if you found something helpful in this podcast, and I think each and every one of us probably has, make sure you give us a. Like, subscribe and share it with a friend.

You never know if that friend's family might be dealing with bullying, and that's not the sort of thing that they're normally going to talk about. So just share it and it's available if they need it.

Also, if somebody is interested in hearing this podcast, they can find us on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, iHeart Podcasts, Spotify, and, frankly, wherever you normally get your podcasts. So thank you for listening to this edition of the Inside Scoop, a podcast produced by the Cobb County School District.