Cedar Rapids schools teach behavior, track data to combat bullying

CEDAR RAPIDS - Kristine Rummel stood in front of a class of bright-eyed kindergartners Wednesday, leading them in a discussion about bullying.

Rummel had shown a video a few minutes earlier, depicting a cartoon character who bossed around and criticized her peers.

'What do we call those people in school?” Rummel asked.

'Bullies!” the students responded, in chorus.

For Rummel - a counselor at Coolidge Elementary School in southwest Cedar Rapids - these behavioral lessons are routine. Rummel said she teaches them every other week in each Coolidge classroom.

But teaching students about unwanted behaviors and how to respond to them, paired with data collection on office referrals and bullying incidents, could become more widespread in Iowa schools under Gov. Terry Branstad's proposed anti-bullying legislation.

The bill, which stalled Wednesday in the House, is known in part for giving schools more authority to address cyberbullying and other incidents that occur off school grounds.

Schools already are able to deal with most of those incidents, school officials and the director of an advocacy group said. Advocates for the bill would say it would clarify that.

The bill also calls for training to help investigate bullying for school district employees, a student mentoring pilot program, a procedure for notifying parents about bullying incidents, and relaxed eligibility requirements for athletes who are victims of bullying and then transfer to a new school district.

But it's an anti-bullying work group outlined in the legislation that could make the biggest impact, said Nate Monson, executive director of the anti-bullying and lesbian-gay-bisexual-transgender advocacy group Iowa Safe Schools.

The work group, to be made up of anti-bullying experts, school officials and parents, among others, would be charged with recommending best practices for Iowa schools.

Many schools now address bullying only through one-time events, Monson said.

'It doesn't do anything,” he said. 'It doesn't change behavior at all.”

Instead, he said, best practices would have schools approach bullying in a more systematic way, using programs already adopted by some Corridor schools.

BEHAVIOR LESSONS

At Coolidge - as in all Cedar Rapids elementary schools - Rummel and teachers use lessons similar to the one given Wednesday to teach students about behavior expectations and how to deal with hurtful or distracting behaviors.

If someone is bullying them, Rummel told the kindergartners, they should use 'I messages” to express their feelings, try to ignore the bully and report the incident to Rummel or principal Greg O'Connell.

And if students believe that they might be mean to a classmate, they should think before they speak and ask themselves if their behavior would hurt a friend's feelings.

Bullying is just one part of Rummel's lessons and one focus of Cedar Rapids schools' behavior curriculum overall. Other lessons focus on teaching students positive behaviors and rewarding those who exhibit them.

The goal, said Cedar Rapids Community School District behavior strategist Jen McDonnell, is to reduce bullying and other unwanted behavior by improving the school culture overall.

The lesson the kindergarteners got Wednesday featured superhero-esque characters representing different 'unthinkable” behaviors - bullying, invading someone's space or fidgeting, for example - and their potential power over students. (Bullying is depicted by a character named Mean Jean.)

Rummel gives students strategies to prevent those behaviors from controlling them. The lessons have worked for older students, as well, said fourth-grade teacher Nick Lang - students 'instantly connect” to the characters.

Some other Corridor schools - including elementary and middle schools in the Linn-Mar district - use a program called Olweus, which Monson said is known as 'the Cadillac of bullying prevention.”

That program, Monson said, allows schools to integrate all rules and education and training efforts aimed at combating bullying.

DATA MONITORING

Schools also monitor data that details office referrals and reports of bullying, looking for trends in the location, time of day or motivation of incidents or the students involved.

At Coolidge, the school's Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports team of teachers and administrators meets monthly to review the data, Rummel said. Administrators also share data with other schools in the district.

This year, Coolidge has seen an increase in office referrals related to physical aggression, Rummel said. The school plans to teach students more about emotional control to help address the problem, she said.

Data monitoring helps schools identify and address overall patterns, McDonnell and Monson said.

'You can find out where your hot spots are,” Monson said. 'You want to know, what's going on here? What's their reasoning? What's their method for bullying?”

But when it comes to individual students, McDonnell said, teachers and administrators should focus on their relationships with students and students' relationships with each other.

That's where staff training - and the behavior lessons - come in.

'I don't think we can ever get rid of bullying,” said O'Connell, the Coolidge principal. '(We're) giving strategies to deal with it when it happens.”