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Uniting adolescent support systems for safe learning environments
Educational Forum, The, Winter 2003 by Strom, Paris S, Strom, Robert D
Another important function of a school site data bank is to determine how SCORE / PASS impacts student safety and learning. Most of the problems associated with unsafe school conditions restrict instruction and learning. For optimal learning and achievement, students must be able to concentrate on lessons, avoid disruption by peers, have uninterrupted time to carry out academic assignments, receive encouragement from teachers and peers, feel a sense of attachment to the school, and believe that informing faculty members about safety concems will result in protection. Teachers and students must report perceived changes in amount of disruption in class, ability to concentrate, peer motivation to learn, feelings of social belonging, unhealthy confrontations, bullying, harassment, and impressions of personal safety.
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The fourth component calls for refinement of PASS. Parents will receive pager messaging from teachers over an extended period of time. Parents will rate the ease of operating pagers, interpreting teacher messages by referral to SCORE, confirming awareness of a need for family dialogue, and coordinating responses of faculty members and family. Students who complete surveys privately in the school library will evaluate perceptions of how pager messaging from school affects parent-adolescent dialogue.
A fifth component includes homework tasks that consist of recommended agenda questions to guide parent-adolescent conversations. The goal for having these conversations about issues such as goal-setting, meaning of success, response to failure, career exploration, and coping with stress is to facilitate the dialogue necessary for reciprocal learning. Listening to one another and engaging in respectful selfdisclosure can result in better-informed parents more able to provide relevant advice and instruction. This approach differs from other parent education programs in the assumption that what parents need most is knowledge of how their adolescents perceive and feel about events in their lives.
The sixth component implicates the student support system. Even though peer abuse is a common obstacle to safe schools, students are seldom expected to contribute to the solution. The conditions that can motivate bystanders to intervene on behalf of mistreated classmates must be identified (Naylor and Cowie 1999). To increase the frequency and effectiveness of peer intervention, students must become aware of their responsibility as individuals to take action when anyone is being mistreated. In addition, they should be taught effective strategies to stop peer abuse and act with courage so that they do not jeopardize their future as compassionate individuals. When students see bullying behavior as a group phenomenon, they recognize the participant role of peer observers and can be trained as facilitators of social change. Specifically, they can report incidents to the faculty. Aside from the victims (who suffer humiliation, anxiety, and pain), bullies (who harm others and endanger their own social and emotional growth) and witnesses (who are in the process of forming lifelong responses to injustice) require attention (Salmivalli 1999). Therefore, we have formulated an anti-bully curriculum that fosters constructive norms through cooperative learning. In addition, students are acquiring peer- and self-evaluation skills they will need in a team-oriented, interdependent environment at their workplace, home, and community (Strom and Strom 200)2a; 2002b; 2002c).
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