Seventh and eighth graders at Abington Junior High School will participate in a bullying questionnaire during the week of April 30 as part of the Olweus Bullying Prevention Program, according to an April 17 letter sent home to parents of these students. The Olweus program will be implemented in the school during the 2012-13 school year.
According to the Olweus program website, www.violencepreventionworks.org, a person is bullied when he or she is exposed, repeatedly and over time, to negative actions on the part of one or more other persons, and he or she has difficulty defending himself or herself."
And, according to its website, the Olweus program was evaluated by six large-scale evaluations involving more than 40,000 students; the program cut the number of students reports by an average of 50 percent in those evaluations according to the website.
Calls to the school district were not immediately returned.
In the letter, Abington Junior High School Principal Mark Pellico said:
"Bullying in schools is a reality that can have a long lasting impact ... [The program] raises awareness of the issues in our schools and creates a common language for students and teachers to recognize and report bullying incidents.”
The questionnaire comprises 42 multiple choice questions and is taken anonymously. According to the letter, it is designed to measure several aspects of bullying problems in schools.
Parents may choose to have their children excluded from the survey.
The Abington School Board recently amended its harassment and bullying policy Aug. 9 to include “intentional electronic transmissions or communications.”
1. I critiqued Bloomberg/Sestak because the "Ground Zero" Mosque is indeed located @ Ground-Zero [because the engine of one of the planes punctured the roof of the Burlington Coat Factory Building; I was rebuffed, but the message of insensitivity to the 9-11 victims was published in the Daily News and in the WSJ. 2. I have been accused of bullying Mr. Corey Gibbons without justification/reference; I never accused him of lying and I never claimed the police should routinely be the first point-of-contact. Rather, as noted frequently and as now corroborated by authority figures in Norristown and in Abington, it may very well be apt to rev-up counseling for alleged-victim, alleged-perpetrator and any observers. In many respects parrying the constant attacks from those two has served to hone the arguments I have raised tersely, publicly, @ multiple meetings. Now, however, it has grown tiresome and repetitive and pedestrian. So, either they reformulate their viewpoints productively, or it may very well be apt to await the results of the survey and then critique the implications thereof.
I might add that the fact that there was generalized awareness of these entries [by the Abington School Board members] was emblematic of the new-media; "Patch" is to be commended [and I kidded its editor by suggesting I may have served to increase its "traffic" single-handedly, simply by fending off the taunts arising from multiple quarters]. In the confusion, many counter-queries were left unresolved, not the least of which was the query by Axil [which I had raised in a comparable form, earlier]. The difference, now, however, is that I have validated my input ["walked the talk"] and, thus, can conclude that these efforts were justified. If ONE case of "bullying" is now scrutinized and prophylaxed as a result thereof, this would have proven productive!
Stop crying ad-hominem. You are the king of ad-hominem rants. Speaking as a teacher who knows bullying, you are bullying this child. You always talk about wanting to hear from experts but fail to pay attention when someone who knows more than you gives advice. The fact that you continually use his name shows your bad taste and desire to rile up others because you like to trap people in your own little pseudo-intellectual games. You just want the last word so you can pretend you "won."
2 beatings within 6 months in the same school? By the same kid? Stick isn't a wide-scale weapon. A one-size-fits-all approach doesn't work. That's what I've been trying to say.
And ask any parent who has had to advocate for their child with an IEP (or GIEP, as the case with the many parents who were advocating for their children at the ASD board meeting last night) whether they feel school decisions are always made with the first priority being the student's best interest. Also, when guaranteed anonymity, many teachers and psychologists will reveal that no, they cannot always speak up regarding what they fee is the child's best interest. To believe without questioning the idea that decisions are always made with children's best interest in mind is naive at best, and dangerously oblivious at worst.
The second part, I have to wonder what teachers and psychologists you have been speaking to. I know many in several different districts/charters and not a single one of them would say that administrators do not have the student's best interest in mind and that they are not allowed to speak up or act when they see bullying.