Kids, Cops, Counselors and Character: Teaching Respect and Responsibility at the Middle Level: Mary Ann Richards, Vikki Deuel

Part of the NCA Commission on Accreditation and School Improvement Journal of School Improvement, Volume 2, Issue 2, Fall 2001

Kids, Cops, Counselors and Character: Teaching Respect and Responsibility at the Middle Level

Mary Ann Richards, Vikki Deuel

About the Authors: Mary Ann Richards is one of two counselors at Walnut Middle School in Grand Island, Nebraska. Before coming to Walnut, she served as a teacher and counselor in a high school alternative education program in Grand Island and as a counselor in a K-8 school on the Navajo Reservation in northern Arizona. During her tenure at Walnut, Mary Ann has developed programs to meet the changing needs of the school's diverse student population. She can be reached at mrichard@esu10.org.

Vikki Deuel is principal of Walnut Middle School and has served as an educator at Walnut for 31 years as a special education teacher, a coordinator of special education programs, assistant principal, and principal. Vikki is completing her doctorate in school administration and has taught classes for the University of Nebraska at Kearney. She is respected in Grand Island as a leader who knows and understands the needs of the community's young people. She can be reached at vdeuel@esu10.org.

Editor's note: This article contains many ideas for interventions that schools might want to use as part of a comprehensive school improvement plan where one of the goals focuses on respect and responsibility.

Introduction

When our building transitioned from a junior high to a middle school five years ago, it had a reputation as the toughest school in our mid-western town of 44,000. While much of that reputation may have been exaggerated, most officers working the day shift on our local police department groaned when they had to answer a call to take an assault report after "the latest fight at Walnut." We are surely NOT a ghetto school with all its inherent risks, but over 60% of our students receive free or reduced lunch, and poverty poses the same problems for our kids in the rural heartland as it does for inner-city youth.

So . . . as we moved toward the more student-friendly atmosphere of a middle school, several of us on the student services team at Walnut (principal, assistant principal, two counselors and a school nurse) committed to finding ways to make our building a safer and more nurturing place where students would take responsibility for their behavior and would want to treat each other with respect. Here are the steps we've taken on our journey as a school community toward meeting these goals.

Prime Time--A First Step

As we built the advisor/advisee component of our middle school program, we designed PRIME (People Relating In Middle Education) TIME where one small group of students (about 15) belongs to one adult who commits to relating to these students and advocating for them. These small groups meet for 20 minutes daily and participate in meaningful, planned activities aimed at fostering respect for one another and responsible behavior in both our school and the larger community. Our Prime Time facilitators can choose from hundreds of planned activities collected and organized around such community-building themes as:

Diversity and tolerance: Our student body is about 30% Hispanic, with many students coming from immigrant families newly arrived in the United States. Unless adults help students break down the barriers imposed by perceived differences, this mix of cultures in our classrooms can lead to misunderstanding and prejudice. When students are encouraged to share the values that make them feel unique and special, respect replaces fear!
Peer relationships: Students share their adventures and struggles with building and maintaining friendships. As they explore conflict situations, they learn to take responsibility for their attitudes and behavior in resolving and/or mediating these conflicts.
Caring and sharing: Prime Time groups learn to look outside themselves to see people who might benefit from acts of kindness that require so little effort but bring so much joy. One eighth grade team, for example, "adopted" a local nursing home, taking handmade decorations to the residents at each holiday; students assisted the residents with planting flowers in the spring and even shared a picnic and "wheel chair races" with their new friends. The respect on the residents' faces mirrored the increased self-respect on the faces of the middle schoolers!

A Cop of Our Own

With our middle school transition under way for a year and Prime Time groups functioning cohesively, our student services team at Walnut brainstormed additional ways to increase the respect and responsibility being fostered in our school community. One of our ideas was to check out the School Resource Officer (SRO) programs utilized by the two largest school districts in Nebraska. What we heard from middle schools in these cities sparked our interest and our enthusiasm for pursuing this idea with the Grand Island Police Department. Negotiations between the City of Grand Island and the Grand Island Public Schools (with Walnut leading the charge) resulted in the police department receiving a COPS grant and Officer Rick moving his "beat" to Walnut Middle School. He has been a full-time member of our staff since 1996; at first, he took a lot of ribbing from fellow officers about being a "kindergarten cop," but because of the community support he has built for his program, their perceptions of his job have changed and four additional officers have joined him as SRO's in other Grand Island schools. Officer Rick adds the following programs to our "respect and responsibility arsenal:"

GREAT: All Walnut seventh graders see Officer Rick in their classrooms presenting the eight 45-minute lessons that make up the Gang Resistance Education And Training curriculum. GREAT was designed by the Phoenix Police Department to help middle school students become responsible members of their communities by setting goals for themselves, resisting pressures, learning how to resolve conflicts, and clearly understanding how gangs impact their quality of life. The focus on preventing gang involvement has been an important one at Walnut because of increasing gang activity in our community over the last several years; this situation was "brought home" to Walnut students when brothers of two of our students were killed in gang-related incidents.

SAVE: Officer Rick has been trained to use the Safe Alternatives & Violence Education Program developed by the San Jose, CA, Police Department Crime Prevention Unit. This unique program offers an effective approach to the identification of personal anger styles, to self-esteem building, and to the acceptance of responsibility for life choices. Students whose assaultive behavior at school has landed them in trouble with the law may have to attend Saturday SAVE classes with Officer Rick at his "other office" at the Grand Island Police Department. By mandating parent attendance at these classes, the program also builds in a component for parent responsibility and youth-parent interaction.

Summer Youth Program: Using funding provided by a GREAT grant, Officer Rick and his fellow SRO's provide a two-week session of "summer fun and learning" for sixth and seventh graders with another two-week session later in the summer for fourth and fifth graders. At-risk students receive special invitations to spend the two weeks at a local elementary school receiving classroom instruction on GREAT topics, listening to guest speakers, working on crafts, acting in skits, and enjoying lots of fun physical activities; the school provides a hot lunch program at no cost. Students LOVE the field trips to a bowling alley, a water park, and a local fun-plex! And, they come away from their summer experience with new respect for law enforcement officers as human beings who care about and encourage kids, as well as increased respect for themselves and their peers as young people responsible enough to make good life choices.

Bullies at Walnut . . . Get a Life

By the time the entire Walnut staff attended the National Middle School Conference in Denver in the fall of 1998, our student services team (now including Officer Rick) realized that, if we were to move forward with our goals of raising the levels of respect and responsibility in our building, we would need to address the serious issue of bullying. At that conference, we attended a presentation given by Canadian educators who were pioneers in the prevention of bullying behavior through their Bully B'ware Program. Using ideas and materials from Bully B'Ware, we surveyed our entire student body, asking their opinion about the scope of the bullying problem in our building; we then began to build our own strategies for "bully prevention" at Walnut Middle School, strategies that now include:

Bully Prevention Classes: Initially, every Walnut student participated in three class sessions (93 class presentations in all) facilitated by the counselors and the SRO. We now present these classes in the early fall to sixth graders, with seventh and eighth graders receiving "refresher courses" in larger group settings. Students examine the characteristics of bullies and their "targets;" they also learn about the different types of bullying. They practice strategies for taking responsibility for their own behavior and taking the power away from the bully. Role-play scenarios help students build their skills for keeping themselves safe and for reporting dangerous behavior when they witness it.

Anger Management Group: Most kids identified as bullies by their peers have a serious anger control problem; interestingly enough, many kids identified as "targets" report having an equally difficult time managing their anger. During the 2000-01 school year, the school resource officer and one of the counselors initiated "Anger Group," serving 8-10 students each semester. Participants explored new ideas about "how anger works;" sharing their viewpoints and their feelings helped them to feel understood. They worked together, building new skills to help them deal with their "trigger situations" and practicing strategies for "backing off" before their behavior resulted in serious consequences for themselves and others. Group members expressed pride in their new sense of self-respect when they succeeded in taking responsibility for behavior that had previously felt so out of control.

"Stop Sexual Harassment!" Classes: As students have gained an increased understanding of bullying and have come to really believe that there is "zero tolerance" for bullying behavior at Walnut Middle School, they have been more open in conversations with adults about their concerns. As a result, staff has become aware of a specific form of physical and verbal bullying that is especially hurtful to our young adolescents, bullying that attacks their developing sexual identity. During the 2000-01 school year, the SRO and a male counselor addressed these issues with seventh and eighth grade boys; a female counselor and a nurse talked with seventh and eighth grade girls. Two class sessions addressed student fears and concerns and raised student awareness of the right to be treated with respect in all situations, especially those embarrassing situations that turn into sexual harassment. The classes help students look at the changes in their own physical and emotional "selves" at puberty and to better understand their peers of the opposite sex. They come away from these sessions knowing that sexual harassment is NOT OKAY and will NOT be tolerated at Walnut.

Purple Hands Grab Walnut

While attending a Character Education conference in St. Louis in the summer of 2000, we discovered the "frosting" for our bully prevention program. We found Purple Hands-The Hands Are Not For Hurting Project that was developed by a woman in Salem, Oregon, to decrease the incidence of school violence and increase the development of healthy relationships among students. In October of 2000, we had a huge "Purple Hands Pep Rally" in our building to introduce Purple Hands to our school community and to the larger Grand Island community as well. Dignitaries from local government and law enforcement joined high school athletes, local pastors, and school district leaders to get "Purple Hands" off to a rousing start. Everyone present encountered the Purple Hands Pledge: "I will not use my hands or my words for hurting myself or others." All students and adults making this pledge traced their hand on purple paper, cut out the handprint, and signed their name on their hand for display in a prominent place in our building. In the months since, the hands of the Governor and the Secretary of State of Nebraska, several professional athletes, a US congressman, and a US senator have found their place on our walls. The other middle schools in Grand Island have joined with us as Purple Hands "partners," and extensive local media coverage has helped students feel tremendous self-respect as "community leaders" who can tell Grand Island, "Every person can make a difference in stopping violence by taking the Purple Hands Pledge."

Anyone visiting Walnut Middle School on any day of the school year will see everything at Walnut come to a halt at 8:05 AM when every student and every adult in the building, led by student volunteers on the intercom, repeat the United States Pledge of Allegiance followed by the Purple Hands Pledge. Students know that taking the pledge each morning is a promise to take responsibility for their words and their actions during the day.

Is It Working?

We began our "push" to address bullying issues at Walnut in the spring of 1999 and during the last two school years have used the programs described above to raise student awareness of bullying attitudes and behaviors and to help students develop the skills needed to take the "power" away from bullies. Teachers and support staff have continually emphasized the importance of respect and responsibility in the classroom and in informal student interactions.

Editor's note: Although not amenable to conversion to standard units, the data exhibited in Figures 1 through 5 offer legitimate and meaningful trend information.

Figure 1

Respect and responsibility cannot be "measured" in the same way that math and reading skills are; there are no standardized tests to tell us whether or not we're making headway in our journey toward a safer and more nurturing school environment. We do, however, have discipline reports on Walnut Middle School students that have been compiled over the past three years. Consequently, as the 2000-2001 school year ended, we were able to analyze the data in Figure 1 and consider the frequency of incidents over time. Throughout the school year, in Prime Time activities, social skills are linked with character traits in helping students learn and practice the skills that show respect for each other and for staff, and responsibility in following instructions (See Figure 1.)

Figure 2

In Prime Time activities, in counseling classes, and in support group settings, students have opportunities to learn social skills and practice strategies that combine responsibility for their behavior with respect for themselves and others. They learn to follow school rules and avoid displaying the disruptive behaviors that destroy a positive learning environment. Figure 2 shows the frequency of disruptive behaviors in each of these school years.

Figure 3

Teachers and counselors use instructional activities and the Purple Hands Pledge to encourage Walnut students to accept responsibility for what they say and develop respect for themselves and others by using appropriate social language. We define socially appropriate language as language free from obscenity and free from harassing or sexually demeaning comments. We believe the increase in incident numbers in 1999-2000 resulted from students trusting staff members enough to report incidents of sexual harassment. Once students saw that administrators would treat reports seriously and enforce the consequences outlined in the school handbook, incidents decreased dramatically. Figure 3 shows the sharp drop in the frequency of inappropriate language.

School staff members rely on the programs outlined in this article to help students focus on respecting themselves and others while behaving responsibly to prevent violence. The frequency of assaults and violent behavior has decreased as shown in Figures 4 and 5.

Figure 4

Figure 5

Character education curriculum and activities which have addressed responsibility and respect have resulted in a significant decrease in police reports being filed for assaults.

These results reinforce our belief that when educators teach assorted subjects and facts along with a set of behaviors and beliefs focusing on the desired traits of respect and responsibility, they can make a positive difference. We have seen, as Dotson and Wisont (1997) observed in their definition of character, that it is possible to help students "know what is right and good, want what is right and good, and do what is right and good." At Walnut Middle School we will continue to embrace Dr. Martin Luther King's challenge, "We must remember that intelligence is not enough. Intelligence plus character is the goal of true education."

References

Books:

Amstutz, W. (1998). Youth violence: The belief-behavior connection. Rochester, MN: National Community Resource Center.

Dotson, A. & Wisont, K. (1997). Teaching character. Chapel Hill, NC: Character Development Group.

Lajoie, G., McLellan, A. & Seddon, C. (1997). Take action against bullying. Coquitlam, B.C.: Bully B'Ware Productions.

Lickona, T. (1991). Educating for character: How our schools can teach respect and responsibility. New York: Bantam Books.

Payne, R. (1995). Poverty: A framework for understanding and working with students and adults from poverty. Baytown, TX: RFT Publishing:

Videos:

Broken Toy, National Center for Youth Issues-Home of STARS, 800-477-8277, http://www.cyi-stars.org

Bully beware! Take action against bullying, Bully B'Ware Productions, 888-55BULLY, bully@direct.ca.

Set straight on bullies, National School Safety Center, 16830 Ventura Blvd., Suite 200, Encino, CA 91436.

Sexual harassment: It's hurting people, National Middle School Association, 800-528-NMSA.

Programs:

GREAT, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, 800-726-7070 or Phoenix Police Department GREAT National Training Team, 800-244-7328.

Purple Hands-Hands Are Not For Hurting Project, http://www.handsproject.org, 888-443-6299.

SAVE. Contact Suzan L. Stauffer, Safe Alternatives & Violence Education Program Coordinator, San Jose Police Department at 408-277-4133.

People:

Vikki Deuel, Principal. Walnut Middle School. vdeuel@esu10.org.

Officer Rick Ressel, SRO. Walnut Middle School. rressel@esu10.org.

Mary Ann Richards, Counselor. Walnut Middle School. mrichard@esu10.org.

Larry Rutar, Counselor. Walnut Middle School. lrutar@esu10.org.