Secret Mean Stinks Anti-bullying Curriculum
Bullying.
It’s a horrible thing for an child to be bullied.
It’s something that needs to be stopped.
I think it’s phenomenal that Secret is stepping up and taking measures against Bullying. I am a HUGE advocate and supporter of their Secret Mean Stinks Anti-Bullying Curriculum where they are making gigantic strides against bullying. It’s inspirational and a powerful thing to see.
I had the chance to interview Ryan Adams, assistant professor of pediatrics for Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center about anti-bullying. Most teens experience bullying at some point in their school years. In fact, 10% of students report being bullied multiple times every week. Through the support of Secret Mean Stinks via a P&G grant, leading researchers in peer bullying/victimization at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center created the “Girls Guide to End Bullying” curriculum, a web-based interactive curriculum designed to be easily used by individual students or by teachers/parents with clear actions on identifying and combating bullying. Cincinnati Children’s is releasing the preliminary findings that support its effectiveness in increasing knowledge and changing behaviors concerning bullying and reducing individual bullying behavior among girls in the US.
I was just honored to be able to connect with Professor Adams… here is what we discussed:
1) What surprises you the most about hearing stories of bullying? Do you feel technology has played a huge role in making it even worse – Facebook, Twitter, etc?
The process of creating, piloting, and testing this curriculum was insightful in that my team and I were often one-on-one with girls getting elicited and un-elicited responses about bullying. I would say the one thing I was surprised about was how many behaviors that are actually bullying that they did not recognize as bullying. This suggests that a big part of addressing this issue is to educate about what bullying is. For instance, many girls had this “ah ha” moment when we explained to them that if you say something mean but follow it by saying “just kidding” it is still bullying.
As far as technology goes, there are a few things to consider. One, not all technology is the same in respect to bullying. For instance, someone posting something mean about you on Facebook is different than someone texting you something mean or even passing along compromising pictures. Often times it is a very different situation with someone not close to you commenting on Facebook that has a very large audience versus someone that has your phone number who is harassing you via text. Also, we need to be clear that some instances of bad things happening through technology might have negative consequences but might not be bullying. It may be the case the motivation for the action was not intended to hurt someone, but was rather an accident or just not thinking through their actions. Finally, I would say that we need to be careful about focusing just on these issues of technology at the expense of other types of bullying that are actually more common. For instance, verbal and relational forms of bullying occur much more frequently than electronic forms of bullying.
2) What can parents like me (I have a 5, 6, 7 and 8 year old in school) tell our kids to help them understand bullying and what it is?
Defining bullying is very tricky issue, even for experts in the field. By definition bullying involves some power differential between the bully and the victim. The problem with this definition is that it is really only a small piece of the negative experiences that we should be trying to stop. The Girls Guide to End Bullying curriculum uses a definition that is closer to what experts call peer victimization: intended action that hurts or harms another person physically or emotionally which can be circumstantial or chronic. We use the term bullying because it is more familiar to most people. So, we explain to kids that they should be looking to stop anything where they or someone else is trying to hurt someone else and it does not matter if it happen once or many times. It is not about who is right or wrong but rather about stopping the actions that hurt someone. Often times others do things that might bring about these sorts of behaviors but that does not mean that they should be hurt.
3) What do you feel the best strategy for teachers is?
I would give teachers a few pieces of advice. One, think about the most difficult student in your class. Think about that student who makes your job hard. That student also makes life difficult for your students and as such, is most likely targeted for bullying. You need to be careful how you react to this student because the rest of the class will take your cue in how to treat that student. Two, when dealing with bullying, keep the bullying behavior and the issue of who is wrong or right separate. The goal should be to address the bullying behavior and make it clear to the student that it is unacceptable and separate from the issue of who is wrong or right.
4) Why was it important for you to partner with P&G on this campaign?
Cincinnati Children’s Hospital and Secret Mean Stinks have the joint mission of ending girl-to-girl bullying. Without the support that we got from the P&G grant, we would not have been able to prove the effectiveness of the Girls Guide To End Bullying.
5) In looking at this curriculum in long-term, what do you feel we will see in 3 years?
Currently, we are working to improve and test the teacher and parent manuals for the site. In this respect we will be performing teacher trainings in schools this upcoming school year. Also, we would like to expand the site in respect to being more interactive with students in terms of creating forums and one-on-one discussions and expand the site to cover additional types of bullying (e.g. dating and family bullying). Overall, we would like to get the word out about the site so that more girls can know that it is available to them and that they can use it.
