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Anti-Bullying
Initiative
ANTI-BULLYING INITIATIVE AT BMS
BMS: Bullying Prevention and Beyond
Bethel
Middle School takes bullying seriously and believes everyone can
help maintain a positive school climate.
The Bethel Board of
Education promotes a secure and positive school climate, conducive
to teaching and learning that is free from bullying behavior.
The State of Connecticut defines bullying as: Any overt act by
a student, or group of students, with the intent to ridicule, humiliate
or intimidate
another student, while on school grounds or at a school sponsored
activity.
The acts are repeated and against the same student over time. Bullying
takes many forms and may include: verbal taunts, name-calling or
threats or stealing/taking someone’s possessions and physical
aggression.
We at BMS like to be specific and accurate when describing behavior. It is not always helpful to generalize and label a person as a “Bully”. Middle School students are still learning social skills and sometimes make mistakes and say something they shouldn’t have. While allowances are made for mistakes and staff recognize that students are in the process of developing social skills, repeated or serious cases of bullying are not tolerated.
While we don’t like to label, for practical purposes lets discuss what bullying looks like.
There
are three main types of participants:
Bully: The student or students who are overtly behaving in the
following manner: teasing, harassing, alienating, intimidating
or verbally
(threatening) or physically aggressive (pushing).
Target: The student who is the intended victim of the bullying
acts.
By standers: Students who witness bullying acts.
Get Empowered!
All three types of participants can and should get help!
Bully: Get help; talk with your parents,
teachers, school counselor and administrators.
Target: Walk with friends, take another
route, ignore, tell the bully to stop, loudly, so staff and
students will hear
and get
involved.
Report bullying to school staff so they can help.
By Standers: You have more power then you think! Get a staff
member to help or tell the bully to stop. What to do if it
is happening
to a friend? Encourage them to tell a grown up, like their
teacher, counselor
or parent.
People who can help: friends, teachers, school counselors,
any school staff, administrators, and parents.
Students may be assigned consequences for bullying behavior. Administrators may assign detentions, in school suspensions and even out of school suspensions, depending upon the severity of the act. School Counselors provide developmental guidance lessons on bullying across all grade levels here at BMS. All BMS staff instruct and intervene with students regarding bullying behavior on a daily basis. Please refer to Parent/Student handbook and Student Agenda Pad for more detailed information. In guidance we have a Parent Resource Center where parents are welcome to browse through materials.
There are times when students may have said or done something to another student that they feel bad about. If so, apologize or see your school counselor for help. We all make mistakes. The important thing is to take responsibility for ourselves.
Stay tuned as our BMS-TV Production Crew is producing a video on bullying.
Bullying Essays by Bethel Middle School Students
Bullying Poems by Bethel Middle School Students