Knocking out bullies with kindness

Put up a put-down. Show you care. Help friends consider the consequences of bullying. Direct them to stop. Find an adult if the situation is serious.

These are five steps that 30 students at Pinon Hills Elementary School learned on Tuesday as part of the anti-bullying Safe School Ambassadors program.

"Our best bet is to have kids changing the norms in their schools; they listen to each other more than adults," said Pinon Hills counselor Carly Strauss. "Adults only make up 10 percent of the population at a school. Kids hear and see things that adults don't. We need them on our side, working for us."

Developed by the nonprofit organization Community Matters, the program was adopted by Pinon Hills in 2007 and has since been adopted by every school in the district, Strauss said.

"Every year, we train more kids, and their impact has become bigger and bigger," she said. "It gets in their brains and stays there."

Strauss said students are referred to the program by teachers and other students. They're usually socially active kids who have influence on their peers. Once in the program, they're trained to identify different types of bullying and how to intervene using a variety of proactive social skills, such as countering an insult with a compliment.

"The biggest kinds of bullying aren't the fights or more aggressive kinds, but the more subtle kinds, like exclusion, leaving people out, teasing and name-calling," Strauss said. "They (the ambassadors) are diffusing stuff before it gets to me, and making sure the real important stuff does get to me. We give them the skills to intervene right then and there."

A dramatic example, Strauss said, was a fifth-grade ambassador who told adults about a friend contemplating suicide. In a different realm than bullying, the incident was clearly serious, and the student was able to use the skills they learned in the program.

The student is OK, Strauss said, because of the action of the ambassador and the later intervention of adults.

But Safe School Ambassadors hasn't come to the district free of charge. In 2007, the Pinon Hills Parent-Teacher Organization paid for Community Matters representatives to train school officials. The following year, the same kind of training was funded through a grant.

This year, Strauss said, the district has received another grant from the Substance Abuse Prevention and Treatment Agency, funneled through the Partnership of Community Resources. She said the grant enables her and career and technical education counselor Tricia Wentz to become lead trainers. From now on, the duo will rotate between schools, instructing site counselors and keeping the program alive without future funding worries.

"It will sustain the program," Strauss said. "We can't afford every year to keep bringing in Community Matters."

On Tuesday, fifth-grader Kendall Carothers was impressed with a water-filled jar trainers used to demonstrate "a culture of cruelty." For every instance of bullying students had encountered, they placed a colored drop in the jar, until the whole concoction was red.

"Every drop is one thing that goes on in the school," Kendall explained. "It's stirred around until the whole school is infested. But we can talk to our friends about it, and, hopefully, they will talk to their other friends. It starts with ourselves."

Fourth-grader Lauren Wilsey, 9, said self-control is part of being an ambassador.

"We want to do good things and have good self-control and not be bullying," Lauren said.

Classmate John Ketron agreed, adding that the program is a fun learning experience.

"I'm going to use it even outside of school," he said.