Taking bullies by the horns

Educators and administrators from school districts all over the Houston area met to discuss bullying at the Action Alliance Workshop & Luncheon held on Wednesday at the University Hilton Hotel.

The event, hosted by the Alumni Association and the College of Education, invited staff, faculty and administrators from the surrounding areas to discuss the issues and challenges that schools face today.

The keynote speaker, Barbara-Jane Paris, has received numerous awards for her work on cyber-bullying and serves on the board of directors for the National Association of Secondary School Principals.

“Kids don’t have a choice about school; they have to go.” Paris said. “As educators, we have an obligation to make sure that their environment is safe. Students deserve a chance to learn, feel safe and to grow, and the staff needs tools to make that happen.”

Rayyan Amine, the executive director for campus improvement and research, said that the workshop draws a wide variety of education professionals who are focused on improving their techniques.

“This year we definitely had a record turn-out for the luncheon. We have people from elementary school to the university level — consultants, principals and councilors — all of whom have an interest in improving the schools,” Amine said.

Many of the attendees of the event were actively engaged throughout the workshop as they noted important points about the nature of bullying and how to best combat it.

They took many of the stories and lessons presented at the workshop to heart as they learned new techniques aimed at dealing with bullying and its repercussions for students.

“Everything was very informative. We deal with bullying all the time at our schools,” said Teresa Baranowski, an assistant principal at Cy-Fair ISD. “It was reassuring and validating for what we do, and I really feel that the event gave us more great ideas about how to best handle these types of situations.”

According to the Cyber-bullying Research Center, 20 percent of 11- to 18-year-old students have been a victim of cyber-bullying, and a 2009 study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that 18.7 percent of Texas students surveyed were bullied on school ground the previous year.

But even in the face of such numbers, many of the educators present at the workshop expressed a committment to combating bullying.

“Are we going to make bullying go away? Of course not,” Paris said. “But we can change it and we can adjust it. We can do our best to contain it.”