Marielys Community Service Essay

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Psychology

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Feb 20, 2024

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Running head: COMMUNITY SERVICE ESSAY Community Service Essay Marielys Lopez William Paterson University Community Psychology Michelle Feinberg June 29, 2022

Community Service Essay page 2 The volunteering opportunity that I took was with the organization STOMP Out Bullying, they are a nationwide organization that offers resources to those who are the victims of bullying. They offer a hotline, referrals to social workers or mental health professionals, and education regarding bias against the LGBT and other minorities. I spent my time serving as a helpline crisis counselor. During my time as a counselor, I learned a lot about bullying and the destructive impact it can have on young people’s lives. Unfortunately, by the time a person contacted the hotline, the person had already suffered severe abuse by their bully(s). In many cases, the system that was meant to help the victims of bullying had failed them, and how those systems can be changed to most effectively combat the problem is under debate. Bullying is a nationwide problem that has been discussed for decades, however, the definition of bullying is not widely agreed upon. According to one of the pioneers of bullying research Dan Olweus, Bullying is “Intentional, repeated, negative, behavior by one or more persons directed against a person who has difficulty defending himself or herself (Olweus & Limber 2010)." According to a survey conducted by Olweus in 2010, 22% of boys and 16.6% of girls in America report regular involvement in bullying. This is tragic because bullied children tend to suffer from higher levels of depression, anxiety, poor self-esteem, social isolation, psychosomatic problems, and suicidal ideation (e.g., Espelage & Swearer, 2004; Hawker & Boulton, 2000; Stassen Berger, 2007). The negative effects of bullying don't simply end with the victim, those who bully are more likely to go on to engage in more antisocial and violent behavior in the future (Sourander et al., 2007). So, addressing bullying isn't simply about solving an conflict between people; addressing bullying affects the entire community. In my experience as a counselor, many of the students who had called reported the incident to adults, but that action did not lead to any change, or caused retaliation which worsened the bullying. For those who called the crisis hotline, it was often their last resort before drastic action like escalating the violence with their bully or committing suicide or self-harm.

Community Service Essay page 3 Those who called were also very young, with most being under the age of 15 despite the hotline serving people up to 24 years of age. I attempted to help these victims by helping them speak to the adults in their lives with full honesty. Many of the people told me that they had told their situation to an adult and hadn't expressed just how deeply it hurt them and what was being done to them. Many hesitated to tell an adult everything because of shame, or because of fear of retaliation. However, I assured them by telling them that adults in their life would watch over them, and if anything were to happen their bully would be punished. This approach didn’t always work though, many students were hopeless about the prospect of continuing their education without being bullied. In those cases, I passed them on to more experienced counselors. In retrospect, many of the things that I encountered while being a counselor were supported by the research on bullying. The research on bullying tells us that there are no clear-cut solutions to the phenomenon of bullying. In a systematic review of school-based bullying prevention programs, researchers determined that only half of the bullying prevention programs they tested had significant effects on bullying (Evan, Fraser, & Cotter 2014). In a review of strategies of different bullying prevention for victims, there was a big difference between what adults recommended and what children thought were effective (Black, Weinles & Washington 2010). The strategy thought most effective by victims of bullying was fighting back. In contrast, fighting back was the strategy least recommended by adults, and rightfully so. Despite being considered the most effective strategy against bullying, those who used counter aggression were more likely to report having been bullied more than once, to fear being bullied again, and to become chronically bullied (Black, Weinles & Washington 2010). Research shows that victims prefer mitigation strategies against bullying that empower them, demonstrate assertiveness, and fulfill their emotional needs (Craig, Pepler, & Blais 2007). This suggests that solutions to bullying require not just discouraging bullying as an act, but the empowerment of victims. Destigmatizing victimization

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Community Service Essay page 4 by addressing school norms can also help victims prevent themselves from falling into chronic victimization due to fear of ostracization. Empowering victims is only one-half of the solution though. The adults in positions of authority need to take significant steps to build a community where bullying is less likely. Researcher Catherine Bradshaw (2015) in her review of the literature on anti-bullying programs, gives us an outline of what approaches teachers and administrators can take to best prevent bullying in their schools. She recommends a three-tiered approach to bully prevention, intervention, and support. The tiered approaches rank in terms of size, the first tier is the universal tier which consists of programs that try to improve the overall school climate, norms surrounding bullying, and bystander behavior through schoolwide meetings, greater staff supervision, and more coordinated classroom management. The second tier is a more selective tier that is designed to address students who aren’t responding to the universal approach. The second tier consists of more intensive social skills training and emotion regulation approaches for small groups of those at risk of being involved in bullying. The third and last tier is reserved for students with very high-risk behaviors who are either bullies themselves or are being bullied. For those students, the recommended approach is to address individual mental and behavioral health concerns of the student with their families. All these tiers combine into one comprehensive framework for addressing bullying that involves students, parents, teachers, and administrators. However, this comprehensive program requires a lot of effort, which makes the viability of its implementation difficult. Teaching is a unique profession because of all the responsibilities that individual teachers undertake, teachers are expected to be instructors, mentors, disciplinarians, psychologists, and parental figures to dozens of kids at once. Amidst all those responsibilities, it's not difficult to understand why such strenuous programs like the one recommended by Bradshaw are hard to implement. To address these concerns Bradshaw makes some recommendations that may prove

Community Service Essay page 5 helpful for teachers, schools, or districts that want to implement an anti-bullying program like the one that she recommends. At the school, district, and state levels, she recommends developing an implementation infrastructure to scale up research based anti-bullying programs (See Bradshaw et al., 2012, for more). She also recommends forming a team to lead the implementation and monitor program cohesiveness and outcomes of anti-bullying programs. According to Bradshaw, the success of any anti-bullying program requires significant pre-implementation planning to get staff support and integrate the program into other services and activities offered by the school. Once implemented, schools should develop consistent short- and long-term goals regarding which programs, services, and staff they want to devote their resources to the bullying prevention effort. An important aspect of spreading effective research-based bullying prevention programs is measuring progress, however, when conducting research-based programs, it may be difficult to quantify results that can be shared with the scientific community to reproduce. The public at large and even researchers disagree about what exactly bullying is. Is bullying simply physical or verbal abuse? Is it abuse with a power imbalance? What behaviors and actions constitute bullying? How often must those behaviors or actions be performed for it to be considered bullying? These questions lead to debate which can distract from the cause of promoting a positive school environment free of abuse. Bradshaw (2015) gives us a simple litmus test; if a victim says they were bullied, then they were bullied. Bradshaw points toward studies that use the information to support student self-reports like observational data, peer reports, or teacher ratings to help get a more comprehensive quantitative view of bullying. However, even with those factors included for analysis, there are still questions about whether research can capture the deeper sociological roots of bullying.

Community Service Essay page 6 The key challenge in understanding bullying is the same challenge faced by anyone attempting to understand most human behaviors. There are countless factors like political climate, individual personality characteristics, and generational shifts in norms between students and teachers that can confound results obtained from research. I believe that are questions that can help one better understand bullying. Some of those questions are: How do bullies see their actions, and what can the bully’s perspective tell us about the norms and behaviors within them that need to be addressed? What is the majority culture of the school, and where do the bully and the victim fit into that culture? How do bystanders differentiate between a fight amongst peers and bullying? The answers to these questions can help teachers, schools, and districts to put their bullying problem into its cultural context that can help inform how they tailor anti-bullying programs to their circumstances. Even considering the cultural context, it has yet to be seen whether anti-bullying programs are universally applicable. Bullying and whether it is considered to be a problem worth addressing is context dependent. This is because what is considered bullying, the appropriate response to bullying, and the responsibility adults have in preventing bullying are culturally defined. What works in one community, may not work in another. Considering the high implementation costs, schools may have to make the impossible choice of prioritizing the use of their resources between antibullying programs or achieving their goals for standardized tests which determine its funding and whether it will continue to be open. This questions whether “research-based” anti-bullying programs are truly worth the cost in hours, staff hiring, and dollars that those programs will bring about. To address these concerns, further research is needed regarding how factors like culture, class status, and gender identity factor into the effectiveness of anti-bullying approaches. Bullying is a difficult issue that requires a deep understanding of child development, the school’s cultural context, and the power dynamics therein. The research on whether anti-bullying programs are effective is mixed, however, some factors make implementing those programs

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Community Service Essay page 7 difficult. Further research is needed regarding the applicability of different approaches to bully prevention, but there are several promising approaches like Bradshaw’s multi-tiered approach being proposed and continuously examined. Combining significant effort, funding, and individual tailoring there is great promise in making bullying a thing of the past for many students References Black, S., Weinles, D., & Washington, E. (2010). Victim strategies to stop bullying. Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice , 8 (2), 138–147. https://doi.org/10.1177/1541204009349401 Bradshaw, C. P. (2015). Translating research to practice in bullying prevention. American Psychologist, 70(4), 322–332. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0039114 Bradshaw, C. P., Pas, E. T., Bloom, J., Barrett, S., Hershfeldt, P., Alexander, A., McKenna, M., Chafin, A. E., & Leaf, P. J. (2012). A State-Wide Partnership to Promote Safe and Supportive Schools: The PBIS Maryland Initiative.

Community Service Essay page 8 Administration and Policy in Mental Health and Mental Health Services Research, 39(4), 225–237. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10488-011-0384-6 Craig, W., Pepler, D., & Blais, J. (2007). Responding to bullying. School Psychology International, 28(4), 465–477. https://doi.org/10.1177/0143034307084136 Espelage, D. L., & Swearer, S. M. (2004). Bullying in American schools: A social- ecological perspective on prevention and intervention. Lawrence Erlbaum. Evans, C. B. R., Fraser, M. W., & Cotter, K. L. (2014). The effectiveness of school-based bullying prevention programs: A systematic review. Aggression and Violent Behavior, 19(5), 532–544. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.avb.2014.07.004 Hawker, D. S., & Boulton, M. J. (2002). Twenty Years' research on peer victimization and psychosocial maladjustment: A meta-analytic review of cross-sectional studies. Annual Progress in Child Psychiatry and Child Development 2000-2001, 505–534. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203449523-26 Olweus, D., & Limber, S. P. (2010). Bullying in school: Evaluation and dissemination of the OLWEUS bullying prevention program. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 80(1), 124–134. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1939- 0025.2010.01015.x Sourander, A., Jensen, P., Rönning, J. A., Elonheimo, H., Niemelä, S., Helenius, H., Kumpulainen, K., Piha, J., Tamminen, T., Moilanen, I., & Almqvist, F. (2007). Childhood bullies and victims and their risk of criminality in late adolescence. Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, 161(6), 546. https://doi.org/10.1001/archpedi.161.6.546 Stassen Berger, K. (2007). Update on bullying at school: Science forgotten? Developmental Review, 27(1), 90–126. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dr.2006.08.002

Marielys Community Service Essay

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