Bullying Prevention Workshops

The PA Masonic Youth Foundation is pleased to announce the 2007-2008 training schedule for educators and agency personnel involved with elementary and secondary education. The workshops are subsidized by the generosity of the Pennsylvania Freemasons to ensure the affordability for school and agency personnel. All trainings are conducted by Mrs. Deborah McCoy, of Educational Development Services, Ltd. Size of the workshops is limited, so register now to avoid missing out!

Trainings are held at the following locations:

Masonic Conference Center (MCC), Elizabethown, PA:
$10 registration fee.
Trainings are from 9 AM to 2 PM.
A continental breakfast, lunch and all training materials are included.
Click here for registration form, or contact Amy Nace at (717)367-1536, ext. 2.
Directions to the MCC are here.

Montgomery County Intermediate Unit (MCIU), Norristown, PA:
No registration fee.
Trainings are from 9 AM to 2 PM.
A continental breakfast, lunch and all training materials are included with your registration. Register online at the MCIU website. You'll find the workshops listed in their catalogue, or you may call Joyce Savage at MCIU at (610) 755-9323.

Counseling or Referral Assistance (CORA), Philadelphia, PA:
No registration fee.
Trainings are from 8:30 AM to 1 PM.
A continental breakfast, light morning snack, and all training materials are included.
Register by calling Gen Walker at (215) 342-7660.

Sugar & Spice and Everything Not Nice:
Female Relational Aggression in Schools

Effectively addressing bullying is a challenge for any school, but successfully tackling how school-aged girls bully one another is particularly difficult. While boys tend to bully one another through physical or other more overt means, girls often use their relationships in their bullying behaviors. Current research and experience tells us that girls probably engage in bullying as frequently as boys and that girls are far more aggressive than we previously believed. School personnel find relational aggression difficult to identify, and even tougher to deal with.

The relational aggression that girls engage in includes spreading rumors, exclusionary tactics, manipulating friendships and relationships, and oftentimes takes place in a network of friends. Girls also tend to be adept at using modern technology to their advantage when aggressing against one another, further complicating the efforts to deal with girl bullying.

This workshop will provide school personnel with an overview of female relational aggression, and up-to-date research on the issue. Realistic intervention and prevention methods, strategies and programs will be discussed, as well as how to deal with the culture that reinforces it. A comprehensive array of resources for schools and agencies to use in dealing with female relational aggression will be provided for review. Resources for students and parents to use in addressing relational aggression will also be provided.

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Bullying Prevention Best Practices:
Writing Policy, Procedures, Guidelines and Discipline Codes

Bullying is a pervasive problem for schools. Ensuring a safe school environment involves more than metal detectors and "zero tolerance" policies; the climate within the school must be addressed so that students feel physically and emotionally safe and ready to learn. Effective bullying prevention is not about implementing one program or the other - it is about a long-term process that involves a wide array of issues. Those issues include developing procedures, guidelines and discipline codes, training educators, educating and partnering with parents, and working with students. Credible bullying prevention is about a positive cultural change within the school community.

Participants are strongly encouraged to bring their school's current policies, procedures, guidelines or discipline codes that address bullying. While there is no one "right way" to write these documents, there are clearly "best practices" that have been established. This workshop will examine what has been established as those "best practices" in bullying prevention and intervention. Participants will then take an active role in the evaluation of their own school documents that address bullying. The purpose of this workshop is to help participants determine if their school's "written word" on bullying is written as well as it can be to meet both their individual needs and the current level of established "best practice". This workshop is not for the purpose of rewriting board adopted policy.

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Threat Assessment in Schools:
Managing Threats & Creating Safe Schools

Several federal organizations have responded to recent youth violence and school shootings by developing violence prevention programs and intervention methods. At the forefront have been the U.S. Secret Service's National Threat Assessment Center and the U.S. Department of Education's "Threat Assessment in Schools: A Guide to Managing Threatening Situations and to Creating Safe School Climates".

Through their collaborative efforts, extensive research was conducted on 37 school shootings. The "Safe School Initiative" was created by the Secret Service's National Threat Assessment Center, in conjunction with the U.S. Department of Education. Their research and "Threat Assessment Guide" provides invaluable information for educators and gives schools a clear process for identifying, assessing and managing students who may pose a threat of violence.

This workshop examines the research behind the development of the Threat Assessment Guide, and its implications for violence prevention programs in schools. Copies of the Guide are provided, and participants will examine the threat assessment process in its entirety outlined in the Guide. Accompanying worksheets will also be provided and reviewed, enabling participants to return to their schools with the materials necessary to begin the development of their threat assessment process. Other violence prevention program resources will be highlighted during the workshop.

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Cyber-Bullying:
Free-speech or On-line Abuse?

On-line bullying, known as "cyber-bullying" is emerging as one of the most challenging issues facing educators and parents as the Internet and other forms of mobile communication technologies become more popular and commonplace among our young people. For most young people, the Internet is a tool for healthy social communication; however, kids and teens are increasingly using the Internet to deliver cruel and harmful messages and photographs.

This workshop presents the latest information and research on cyber-bullying, and how youth use technology to harass, humiliate, intimidate and/or threaten others. Web sites that kid frequent will be visited and examined, along with other sites pertinent the cyber world of our kids. Participants will review legal rulings and precedents regarding student speech, and what school's roles and responsibilities are in the prevention and intervention for acts of cyber-bullying that occur both in and out of school. Current resources available to educators will also be reviewed.

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Hazing & Harassment:
Prevention, Intervention and Legal Issues for Schools

The numbers are grim: over 80% of high school students reported experiencing sexual harassment during their high-school years. Equally disturbing is the research that indicates virtually every type of group high school students belong to, everything from academic groups to church youth groups, has had hazing experiences. Every high school student is "at-risk" for the harmful experiences of hazing and harassment. The question we as adults need to effectively answer is how we address these issues to make our schools a physically and emotionally safer place for our students.

This workshop will provide an overview of hazing and harassment at the high-school level, highlighting the latest research. Current legal issues surrounding both will also be reviewed, along with the responsibilities of schools to address the behaviors.

Practical strategies to deal with hazing and harassment will be explored, along with programs and resources that can utilize in prevention and intervention efforts. The workshop will conclude with an opportunity to look at affordable school resources, and a time for "questions and answers".

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The Next Step in Bullying Prevention:
Developing Empathy and Moral Intelligence in Youth

Creating and implementing effective bullying prevention in schools is much more than introducing one program or the other. It is more than hanging posters, establishing rules, and initiating curriculum. While those are important, they alone will not ensure the success of schools' bullying prevention efforts. Bullying prevention that works, over the long-term, is about a positive cultural change within the school community. More importantly, it is about forming and developing a "community" within each classroom, in each school.

This workshop will take participants to the next step in bullying prevention. Current research addressing the issue of school communities will be reviewed. We will examine how to develop a community within each classroom, regardless of age and grade level. Exercises and strategies that help maintain and strengthen the classroom community will be introduced. Finally, we will explore how to teach empathy as an essential social skill, and develop it within our classrooms. Developing empathy in youth requires us as adults to do more than teach it as part of a lesson plan. It requires us to create classrooms and schools with an empathic culture as part of our overall school community.

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Bullying & Harassment Prevention of Gay & Lesbian Students:
The School's Role and Responsibility

Bullying, harassment and name-calling are significant problems for many students in schools nationwide, and according to a study, GSLEN (2006), From Teasing to Torment: A Report on School Climate in Pennsylvania, particularly those in Pennsylvania. In addition to physical appearance, students reported that the most common reasons other students were bullied were sexual orientation and gender expression. Less than half of the students who responded to the study felt very safe in their schools (6% of students reported being lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender - LGBT).

The study also highlighted the troubling reality that many teachers and school staff did not intervene when hearing students use biased language, with about 20% of those students reporting hearing staff use biased language as well. All students have a right to be safe in their schools, regardless of how others perceive them. Federal courts have also weighed in on this issue, and have spoken with clarity about the duty of schools to protect and provide a safe and orderly environment for all students.

This workshop will provide an overview of the difficulties of school life for many of our LGBT students, citing the most recent research addressing this issue. Current legal issues involving schools and LGBT students will be reviewed, along with the responsibilities of schools to address the behaviors.

Time will be spent specifically examining how to craft policies, procedures, guidelines and discipline codes that provide a safe learning environment for all students. Realistic strategies to deal with the bullying and harassment of LGBT students will be explored, along with programs and resources that are helpful in a school's prevention and intervention efforts.

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Classroom Meetings & Bullying Prevention

Effective bullying prevention is a long-term process that utilizes many different tools. Creating a safe, empowering classroom and school room culture is paramount to the success of any bullying prevention effort. Conducting regular classroom meetings has been proven through research and experience to be an important component of positive classroom culture change.

This workshop will introduce the research on classroom meetings and their effectiveness in bullying prevention. The "nuts and bolts" of running successful meetings will be reviewed, along with an array of topics and issues that can be utilized in those meetings. Participants will gain practical hands-on experience in facilitating the meetings, and will receive helpful handouts and resources.

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