Bullying: Role of the Bystander

In my new role within my school district, I have spent a lot of time exploring bullying prevention resources in order to support school counselors with the development of programs for their specific school cultures.  One of the main things that I have been looking at is the role of the bystander.  It is not simply the bully and the target, but it is other students, teachers, parents, and school staff that are also involved by either witnessing or being aware of bullying taking place.  Bystanders can either take a passive role and ignore what is happening, or they can take a stand to support the target of the bullying and send a message that bullying behavior is not welcome in their school community.  Many of those who fall into this bystander role, though, are unsure of what to do in the moment.  In this video from Ireland, two boys are being harassed because of their sexual orientation.  However, what transpires shows that a simple gesture from a bystander can quickly turn the tables.

School Violence and Resiliency

In the last few weeks, another school-violence plot was uncovered and thankfully stopped in Albany, Oregon.  As with any of these incidents, there are always a lot of questions raised: Why?  What warning signs were there?  How can we prevent things like this from happening in the future?

As school counselors, we are often looked to for answers to these questions in an effort to help try to make sense of what seems unthinkable, and to reassure communities that schools are safe places for students and staff.  I was able to discuss this topic this past Wednesday on KGAL Talk Radio (starts at 37:38), a station based in Albany, Oregon, where this latest incident occurred.  One of the main questions the program host had for me was, "What are the warning signs?"  The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), has a list of risk factors for youth violence.  It is important to note that just because a student may be exhibiting or experiencing some of these risk factors does not necessarily mean that they are going to commit an act of violence--correlation and causation are not the same thing.  A few of them are:

• History of victimization
• Substance use and misuse
• History of emotional distress/mental health concerns
• Exposure to family violence
• Antisocial beliefs (spoken, written, posted online)
• Poor family functioning
• Low parental involvement
• Inconsistent, extreme, or relaxed discipline standards at home
• Social rejection amongst peers
• Membership in a delinquent or anti-social peer group
• Lack of involvement in school or community activities
• Poor academic and school performance 

source: www.cdc.gov

Does this mean that every child that has one or more of these risk-factors is planning to do harm?  Of course not.  However, as school counselors we deal with that list every day at all levels, elementary through high-school.  If a child is not having success with peers at school, we develop friendship and social-skills groups to help them build connections with other students.  We might also work with students on finding some club or activity they can participate in that would increase their connection to the school and community.  Meanwhile, we are educating our whole schools about bullying, the roles of bullying (including that of the bystander), the consequences of bullying, and how to report bullying, all in an attempt to lessen student victimization and isolation as well as increasing empathy amongst our populations.  If students are not finding success at school, we help teach study and organization skills.  We work to build relationships between teachers and students to improve communication and therefore, academic success.  If a child is struggling with mental illness, we work with the family and additional support personnel such as a school psychologist or social worker, connecting them to resources within and outside of the school to give them the help they need.  Our relationship with the families of our students can often allow us to help strengthen the connection between students and parents if they are going through a particularly difficult time together.  The very nature of our role within schools is to support all of our students, and we are uniquely qualified to help address the risk factors presented here.  Further, in my interview, one of the things that I felt was most important about this latest incident in Albany, OR, was that it was prevented.  The student in question made statements that were concerning, and ultimately someone reported this to the authorities.  Again, because our role in schools is ideally a non-punitive one, we work hard to establish relationships with all of the students on our case-loads so that they feel comfortable talking to at least one adult within building.

Beyond addressing individual risk factors, school counselors can also help to develop resiliency skills in children.  What is this, exactly?  Basically, we are teaching skills and strategies that help children develop protective factors and build coping mechanisms so that as challenges inevitably arise throughout their lives, they are more able to deal with them successfully.  By teaching these concepts, you are giving them a "toolbox" that they can open when the road gets bumpy, even if there is no one else around to give them support.  Fairfax County Public Schools in Fairfax County, Virginia, has developed a resiliency program, based upon work by Henderson and Milstein.  There are six components:

• Increase pro-social bonding
• Set clear, consistent boundaries
• Teach life skills
• Provide caring and support
• Set and communicate high-expectations
• Provide opportunities for meaningful participation

source: www.fcps.edu

If we look at these six components in more detail, school counselors are highly qualified to teach students skills, help them practice these skills, and then assist them with applying them to their own lives.  As stated before, we teach lessons and develop groups to help students develop appropriate social skills.  We teach children coping skills.  We are able to provide support to not only students, but also to families, teachers, and school personnel.  Through goal setting and post-secondary planning, we are helping to communicate high-expectations but also giving them the steps to reach these expectations.  Finally, though our lessons and groups, as well as by connecting them to activities, clubs, and groups, we are helping students to find ways to share their unique thoughts and talents in a meaningful way with their communities.  For more information and additional resources that you can use to help build resiliency in your own students, click on the links presented above.  

However, as I spoke about in my radio interview, to be able to form trusting relationships with students and families, to be able to develop and implement interventions that address possible risk factors, and to build resiliency in all students, we need to have school counselors present in every school, and we need to have reasonable ratios.  The American School Counselor Association (ASCA) recommends a ratio of 1:250.  Yet, Oregon, where this latest incident occurred, stands at 1:553.  More extreme situations exist in states like California, where the ratio sits at 1:1016, or in the city of Philadelphia, which has just enacted a school budget that will cut school counselors, in addition to arts programs, librarians, and athletics--programs that can help decrease isolation and increase connections between students and schools.  Given the opportunity, we are capable of doing so much to create safe and welcoming environments for all students, as well as develop supportive interventions for students who are struggling.

Safe at School: Feedback Needed

The American School Counselor Association, the National Association of School Psychologists, and the School Social Work Association of America are partnering with the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) to gather important information about the climate of our schools and the preparation of school-based mental health and academic support personnel.  If you are not familiar with GLSEN, they are one of the leading organizations assisting schools in supporting the needs of sexual and gender minority youth.  Beyond this, they have a wealth of resources and curriculum to support educators and students in building safe and inclusive educational environments for all, and are strong advocates for creating bully-free schools.

Additionally, GLSEN does an amazing amount of research, examining everything from school climate as it relates to LGBT youth to the specific experiences of LGBT students of color.  One of their next projects is to examine the pre-professional and professional training of school counselors, school psychologists, and school social-workers with regards to creating safe and supportive environments for all students.  If you are a middle-school or high-school counselor, psychologist, or social-worker, please take 15 minutes and complete the survey at www.safeatschool.org.  The more school helping professionals that take this survey, the stronger the data will be and the better picture they will be able to paint of just where we stand in our profession with regards to this topic.

Please pass this survey on to the other mental health and academic support personnel in your building, and feel free to share this information through Facebook and Twitter.

Reflection: The Bully Effect

Last year I wrote a post about the movie Bully, a powerful documentary that followed the lives of several kids, families, schools, and communities who were effected by bullying and harassment.  A year later, you are left wondering how the people involved are doing and how their lives may have changed as a result of the movie.  Recently, a follow-up documentary called The Bully Effect, produced for Anderson Cooper 360 on CNN, has been airing (check local listings, On-Demand, and other television video services for viewing opportunities).  This piece follows up on most of the stories and people shown in the original documentary:

Overall, this new documentary conveys a message of hope for the kids and families in the original movie, and aims to show just how powerful an effect the film has had on kids, schools, and communities across the nation.  Alex, a child who was physically assaulted on a daily basis in his school and on the school bus, now has many friends and has turned into a powerful advocate and speaker against bullying across the country.  The father of Ty, a young man who committed suicide, has also turned into an anti-bullying speaker whose mission is to reach as many schools and kids as possible with his message.  Kelby, a young woman who was harassed and bullied because of her sexual orientation, has been in a relationship for three years and has the continued love and support of her family.

All is not right with the world, however.  I was most concerned with the fact that, although Alex is doing extremely well, his family had to move into another school district in order to insure the safety of their children after his sister was assaulted on the playground of the same middle-school that Alex had attended.  The administrator who the family had sought out for support but who had done little, at least as portrayed in the context of the original film, has not only remained in the school district but was promoted to being a principal of a local elementary school.  Kelby has the support of her girlfriend and her family, but eventually the decision was made for her to drop out of high-school and get her GED after she was allegedly run down by a car close to school grounds with the intention to injure her based on her sexual orientation.  This continues to demonstrate that anti-LGBT bullying and harassment not only impact students socially and emotionally, but also academically.

The message to me from this follow-up documentary: advocacy is still needed, and we still have work to do.  Even after the national spotlight had been shown on Alex and Kelby's schools, the bullying and harassment continued to the point that they both had to leave not only in order to thrive, but in order to be safe.  Further, while they are now in places where they can be begin to move ahead with their lives, I wonder about the many other kids who are still in those schools and communities--if nothing has changed within those school cultures with regards to bullying and harassment, are they doomed to encounter the same hostilities, the same assaults, the same threats as Alex and Kelby?  If kids do not have even the basic need of safety being met at their school, how can we expect them to learn?  How can we expect them to achieve?  How can we expect them to move into meaningful post-secondary programs?  Indeed, the "Bully" effect has been huge as the stories of the children and families portrayed have made their way into hearts and minds across the country.  However, what seems amiss is that it has not yet made its way into some of the schools of the very kids who continue to inspire anti-bullying policies and conversations to this day.

School Counselors: Advocacy needed, and we still have work to do.

Resource: To This Day

This video has been making the rounds, and for good reason.  Not only is its message one of importance, but it combines powerful poetry, beautiful imagery, and music to deliver a reflection on the long-term effects of bullying in its many forms.

Day of Silence: April 19, 2013

Many schools participate in the annual Day of Silence.  If you're unfamiliar with exactly what it is:

"The Day of Silence is a student-led national event that brings attention to anti-LGBT name-calling, bullying and harassment in schools. Students from middle school to college take a vow of silence in an effort to encourage schools and classmates to address the problem of anti-LGBT behavior by illustrating the silencing effect of bullying and harassment on LGBT students and those perceived to be LGBT." (source: www.dayofsilence.org) 

As a school counselor, you may be approached by students who would like to participate and need help navigating your particular school culture to determine how best to go about organizing.  You may be able to help support your school's Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA) as they prepare for the the event.  Most importantly, you can show support to all of the students in your school as they take a day to reflect upon how members of the LGBT community often feel as if they have no voice due to anti-LGBT bullying and harassment.  You can do this by:

• Advocating for all students to be able to participate within your school
• Assisting student leaders with your school's approval process for creating an event during the school day
• Helping school administration and student leaders work together to determine how the event will work best in your school community
• Serving as a sounding board and support for students and staff as they prepare for, participate in, and reflect upon the event and its meaning
• Guiding school personnel and student leaders to resources and tools for the event

For more information and resources, check out the Day of Silence website, as well as the short videos below:

Resource: Small Town & Rural LGBT Students

The Gay, Lesbian, & Straight Education Network (GLSEN), recently released a report that looked at the experiences of LGBT students in small town or rural schools.  In their 2011 School Climate Survey, GLSEN found that for LGBT students across the country, overall levels of harassment are beginning to decline, while support and resources in schools for these students is on the increase (source: www.glsen.org).  However, as you read these reports every two years, you wonder how the experiences for students differ based on geographical location or locale.  Their latest report, Strengths and Silences, gives us this snapshot, with a focus on those students who live in smaller, more isolated communities.  Some key findings:

• 87% of rural LGBT students reported being verbally harassed, 45% reported being physically harassed and 22% reported being physically assaulted at school in the past year because of their sexual orientation.  
• 68% of rural LGBT students reported being verbally harassed, 31% reported being physically harassed and 16% reported being physically assaulted at school in the past year because of their gender expression.  
• Rural LGBT students who experienced higher levels of victimization were less likely to plan to attend college than students who experienced lower levels of victimization (85% vs 93%).  
• 27% of rural students reported having a GSA at school, compared to 55% of suburban students and 53% of urban students. But when there was a GSA at school, rural students were more likely to attend than urban and suburban students.  
• Rural LGBT students reported feeling less safe than students in suburban and urban areas and rural students living in the South and Midwest were more likely to feel unsafe based on sexual orientation than were students in rural areas of the Northeast or West.  
• Rural LGBT students were more likely to feel unsafe at school due to their sexual orientation (71% vs. 62% of suburban and 58% of urban school students) and gender expression (49% of rural students vs. 42% of suburban and 42% of urban students).  
• 36% of rural LGBT students had missed class and/or a day of school in the past month due to feeling unsafe, compared to 30% of suburban LGBT students and 30% of urban LGBT students. (source: www.glsen.org)

Overall, our LGBT students in rural and small communities need additional supports and resources.  One of the more interesting findings of this report, however, is with regards to school counselors.  52% of rural students felt that they would be comfortable talking to a school counselor about LGBT issues, higher than any other school personnel, including teachers, administrators, and other support staff.  In fact, even in suburban and urban districts, students felt that school counselors were the go-to people with regards to conversations about LGBT issues.  However, as the report discusses, students in reality are bringing up LGBT topics most with teachers, not with counselors (source: www.glsen.org).  

This information, I believe, tells us two things.  First, that we as school counselors need to be trained in working with LGBT students and families:  What Is Your LGBT IQ?  LGBT students across the board feel that we are the people they are most able to seek out to talk about these issues.  If you are a counselor at a small or rural school, seek out trainings at local, state, or national conventions.  Many school counseling conferences now feature sessions on working with LGBT students and families.  You can also look at webinars on LGBT topics sponsored both by ASCA as well as GLSEN.  Secondly, we need to consider ways to let students know that we are a safe-space for them to have these conversations.  This can be done by sponsoring or making a visit to your school's Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA) or by posting a Safe-Space sticker somewhere in your office.  As the data in this report tells us, this is an issue of academic performance, post-secondary outcomes, school safety, and attendance.  By addressing this issue, you are helping to remove barriers to academic success for all students.

Read the full report here or view the webinar.

Transgender Kids: Inspiration and Advocacy

I am a little obsessed with NPR.  I listen to it in the car on the way to work, on the way home from work, and subscribe to multiple podcasts.  It is my secret dream to someday do something worthy of being interviewed on Fresh Air by Terry Gross.  However, my favorite hour of radio is Tell Me More, a program that seeks to explore modern life, issues, and news from a multi-cultural perspective, and multi-cultural from the broadest possible lens.  Not coincidentally, it is also my secret dream to do something worthy of being interviewed by Michel Martin, the host.  So many secret dreams, so little time.

I was driving to a meeting on Monday at just the time that Michel Martin was doing an interview that pulled me in from the moment it started.  Andy Marra is a transgender woman who was adopted by an American family from South Korea.  She recently wrote a blog entry at the Huffington Post about her experience of finding and coming out to her birth mother in Korea.  As she was going through the coming out process, she chose to delay her full transition (hormones, surgery) until she found her birth mother:

"I could never find the will to move forward with my transition -- taking hormones or surgery -- despite the opportunity to do so. And my hesitation was largely due to my unknown family living far away in Korea.  Like me, more than 200,000 Korean babies and children have been sent overseas. But less than 3 percent of us are able to find our families. The odds were clearly not in my favor. But what if I did find my family after all these years? And how would they handle meeting a young woman instead of a baby boy who should have grown into manhood? I was left with few ideas to reconcile my concerns." (source: www.huffingtonpost.com)

As she continues with her story, she finds her mother literally in the span of a few hours, and the two are reunited.  Like so many kids who are contemplating the coming-out process, she is nervous to share her gender-identity with her birth mother, a woman she has just met.  However, the turn in this story is that it is her birth mother who first broaches the subject.  She instinctually knows that there is something weighing Andy down, and after some questioning, Andy tells her that she is a transgender woman.  Her birth mother responds:

"'Mommy knew,' she said calmly through my friend, who looked just as dumbfounded as I was by her response. 'I was waiting for you to tell me'...'Hyun-gi," she said, stroking my head. 'You are beautiful and precious. I thought I gave birth to a son, but it is OK. I have a daughter instead.'" (source: www.huffingtonpost.com)

It is this moment, in this highly-charged situation of a reunited birth mother and daughter, that Andy begins to find her own self-acceptance and an ability to move forward in her own life.  You can listen to the full audio interview here.

As I've written about before, finding acceptance and support is key to the well-being of our transgender students, and, right now, the deck is stacked against them:

• More than half of all transgender students have been physically harassed (pushed or shoved) because of their sexual orientation and gender identity.
• More than a quarter of all transgender students have been physically assaulted because of their sexual orientation and gender identity.
• Almost half of transgender students report missing at least one class in the last month and one full day of school in the last month because of concerns for their safety.
• Transgender students who experience high-levels of harassment have an average GPA that is .5 lower than that of transgender students who experience low-levels of harassment. (source: www.glsen.org)

These students are at a higher-risk of truancy, bullying and harassment, assault, and poor academic performance.  Additionally, parent reactions to LGBT students makes a huge difference.  According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, those students who experienced high-levels of parental rejection were:

• Nearly six times as likely to have high-levels of depression
• More than eight times as likely to have attempted suicide
• More than three times as likely to have used illegal drugs
• More than three times as likely to engage in unsafe sexual behaviors that put them at risk for sexually transmitted diseases (source: www.cdc.gov)

For students who experience more acceptance from family, such as Andy, they have a support system in place regardless of their school environment.  However, for those students who are experiencing high-levels of rejection at home and are thus at higher-risk for depression, suicide, and substance use, the school environment can be make-or-break for that child.  Transgender kids in schools can be a highly emotional issue, as currently being played out in the East Aurora School District, but the data shows that this is an issue of school safety, student achievement, mental health, and even life and death.  We, as school counselors, are charged with advocating for all students, with a focus on creating an equitable and safe environment so that every child can learn.   Our transgender students fall into this category.

For resources, I would recommend taking a look at the previously mentioned CDC website, which has tips for making schools safe places for all LGBT students.  Additionally, the Gay, Lesbian, & Straight, Education Network (GLSEN) has a sample transgender policy that can serve as a conversation starter amongst your stakeholders and give you ideas about what issues need to be addressed, from bullying/harassment policy to bathrooms and locker rooms.  All of our students should have the opportunity to do well in school and have access to supports that allow them to figure out their identity for themselves, just like Andy.

Ally Week

The Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) sponsors a week each year for allies of LGBT students to stand up and pledge to refrain from using demeaning anti-LGBT language, intervene in situations where students are being bullied or harassed based on real or perceived sexual orientation or gender identity, and engage in activities that attempt to raise awareness and end bullying and harassment of all students.  (source: www.glsen.org)  This year the week will take place from October 15-19, and schools from around the country will participate in many ways.  The main website for Ally Week has information, name tag templates, and pledge cards that groups can print out as a way for students to show their commitment to creating positive school communities where all students are free from bullying and harassment.  Take a look at the video below for more information:



If you have students that are interested in participating in Ally Week, note that October is National Bullying Prevention Month and that perhaps Ally Week could be incorporated in some way into programming that may already be in place.  It does not necessarily have to be that you use cards and badges, but it is important to acknowledge that anti-LGBT slurs and bullying will be taken as seriously as all other disparaging language and actions.  As I've discussed before, programs such as Ally Week can be important to the academic success of LGBT students.  As the latest data from the 2011 School Climate Survey shares, LGBT students who have schools with supportive adults in the building have higher GPA's, are more likely to pursue higher-education after graduation, are more likely to attend school, and are more likely to feel safe when in their school building. (source: www.glsen.org).  Thus, interventions within the school that are supportive of all students' rights to be in a safe and supportive environment, including LGBT students, can have long reaching effects into your school's outcome data in addition to the health and well-being of your students.

The "Middle" Child

Believe it or not, fellow counseling geeks, this is not going to be a post relating to Adlerian counseling theory and birth order.  Rather, today's topic is gender.

A few months ago I wrote about transgender children in schools.  We have seen a lot of representations of the struggles of transgender adults through the mass media over the years, but now we are also seeing how children who have been identified as transgender grow-up within their schools, their families, and their communities.  They face difficult decisions about hormones, dress, religion, surgeries, socialization, and family relationships.  We, as school counselors, will often be looked to within our buildings and school districts to help pave the way for these students, coordinating with teachers, parents, and administration in order to develop environments that are supportive and conducive to learning.  This is important because, as I have written about in the past, there is significant bullying in elementary schools that extends to all children who act outside of what are seen as "traditional" gender norms, regardless of whether or not they currently or in the future will identify as gay or straight, male or female.

Sexual orientation is a construct that tends to become more fully-focused around puberty, although many gay and lesbian adolescents and adults will, upon reflection, realize they have always known, or have at least understood from an early age that there was something different about them.  Gender, however, is something that tends to be solidified at a much earlier age--or is it?  Fading are the days where we thought of gender as black and white--male or female.  Rather, gender, like sexual orientation, is now being viewed more as also being along a continuum, with people feeling male and/or female to varying degrees.

This is being reflected in our elementary schools.  Last weekend an article ran in the New York Times entitled What's So Bad About A Boy Who Wants To Wear A Dress?  The article discusses the changing tide of allowing kids to express their gender preferences more openly in their lives, such as boys who wear dresses to school.  The children discussed in this article, though, are reflective of children in the "middle" of gender--they identify as boys, as males, but yet like to wear dresses and pink sparkles.  They fit neither into the "traditional" male camp, but nor are they "transgender":

"Many parents and clinicians now reject corrective therapy, making this the first generation to allow boys to openly play and dress (to varying degrees) in ways previously restricted to girls—to exist in what one psychologist called 'that middle space' between traditional boyhood and traditional girlhood. These parents have drawn courage from a burgeoning Internet community of like-minded folk whose sons identify as boys but wear tiaras and tote unicorn backpacks. Even transgender people preserve the traditional binary gender division: born in one and belonging in the other. But the parents of boys in that middle space argue that gender is a spectrum rather than two opposing categories, neither of which any real man or woman precisely fits." (source: www.nytimes.com)

In the past, as the article states, it was often recommended that the parents of children who exhibited characteristics outside of their traditional gender remove all non-traditional gender materials (clothes, toys, even friends) from their child's life, thus "encouraging" them to conform to the traditional gender model.  However, as we are now seeing, families are finding that trying to push their children into a gender box is not for them, and they are working with other parents and with schools and communities to create safe and supportive spaces for their children to express themselves and their many facets of gender.  In general, we like to be able to "label" people, to categorize them.  Oftentimes people want to know if children who do not fit into a specific mold with regards to gender are gay?  Transgender?  Does he want to be a girl?  While studies and statistics are limited, it appears at this time that some of these "middle" children will eventually identify as gay, a few as transgender, and many will eventually consider themselves heterosexual males. (source: www.nytimes.com) We have to become more at ease living within the gray areas and allowing kids to explore and express the many complex facets of themselves--this includes gender.

About a year-and-a-half ago I heard an interview with the mother of a son who enjoys wearing pink, dresses, and sparkles.  She speaks very candidly about her journey through this process as a mother, and in fact has written a children's picture book entitled My Princess Boy which discusses acceptance of a 4-year old boy who just happens to enjoy dressing up in traditionally girls' clothing and playing "princess."  Her son fits into this "middle" category in that he very clearly states that he is a boy, but he simply enjoys and is passionate about the color pink, tutus, and dresses.  Both her website and her Facebook page  detail the journey that the whole family has taken with her son.  As she often shares, it is often her "princess boy" who teaches them about tolerance and acceptance.  His entire family--his mother, his father, and his older brother--support him.  This was a Facebook status a few months ago:

"My Princess Boy's brother is a true champion. At soccer practice, a couple of players were pointing and laughing at my princess boy because he was in a tutu. My older son (the champion) said, 'its not cool to laugh at my brother.' One kid replied, 'but he's in a dress dude'. Dkobe said, 'So what. If you ever saw him pick out a dress or a pink top, you would see how happy it makes him'. On the way home, my Princess Boy thanked his champion and said, 'I'm giving you a secret  key to the fun world. It's full of pink and purple butterflies.'" (source: www.facebook.com/MyPrincessBoy)

It is not all roses and flowers for these middle children, however.  There can often be struggles with peers and even adults. As the New York Times article discusses, one boy lost his friend when the other boy came over for a play date and saw there were dolls all over the floor.  This boy has not had a play date since. (source: www.nytimes.com)  The boy from My Princess Boy faces comments like the one quoted above, but also from the general public, such as the time he wanted to buy a toy that one might identify as traditionally a "girl's" but was told by another child that he couldn't buy it as he was a boy.  It should be noted his brother stepped in here, as well. (source: www.facebook.com/MyPrincessBoy)

As school counselors, we will deal directly with these situations when they come into the classroom.  Teachers, students, and parents will look to us for guidance and reassurance.  For instance, at the blog He Sparkles, a mother is struggling with her son starting traditional school on a full-time basis next year (he was previously split between home school and traditional school).  He prefers wearing pink and sparkles, and was able to do this with khaki pants on the two days each week he attended a traditional school last year.  Next year, he is attending a school full-time with a uniform policy that says he was to wear a blue or white polo shirt--no pink.  This rule is consistent for both boys and girls.  However, he has chosen a khaki romper with a skirt to wear on the bottom versus the khaki pants listed under the "boys" choices for the school uniform.  His mother is optimistic about how the school will react, but is also trying to anticipate what will happen if there are problems. (source: hesparkles.wordpress.com)

Something similar happened with one of the children discussed in the New York Times article.  One of the boys, "Alex," enjoyed wearing dresses, but as he began kindergarten he wore pants and shirts, as his parents were concerned about bullying from other children with regards to the dresses.  Colors, sparkles, jewelry, etc., they left up to him as a way to express himself.  He wore hot-pink socks to school one day and was teased by one of the other students.  His teacher chose to respond in this way:

"During circle time, she mentioned male friends who wore nail polish and earrings. Mrs. C. told them that when she was younger, she liked wearing boys’ sneakers. Did that make her a boy? Did the children think she shouldn’t have been allowed to wear them? Did they think it would have been O.K. to laugh at her? They shook their heads no. Then she told them that long ago, girls weren’t allowed to wear pants, and a couple of the children went wide-eyed. “I said: ‘Can you imagine not being able to wear pants when you wanted to? If you really wanted to wear them and someone told you that you couldn’t do that just because you were a girl? That would be awful!’ ” After that, the comments in the classroom about Alex’s appearance pretty much stopped." (source: www.nytimes.com)

How would you react to these situations if this was your school?  What could you do to help lay a smooth transition for these students, their teachers, administration, and classmates?  

• I would highly recommend looking at the Ready, Set, Respect! curriculum over at GLSEN, as well as the Welcoming Schools curriculum from the Human Rights Campaign for guidance lessons on tolerance and acceptance for elementary school students.  
• Additionally, the book, My Princess Boy, could be a great biblio-lesson for young students about accepting all students who may exhibit non-traditional gender characteristics, both male and female.  
• Further, always go back to your best practices of developing relationships with families and teachers so that you can better help to facilitate understanding when the need arises.  

Our mission is to remove barriers to academic success--by helping your school community develop tolerance and acceptance, you are enabling young children to focus on what's most important--their learning.

Postcards from ASCA 2012: It Gets Better

Whoever booked Dan Savage for the 2012 American School Counselor Association Conference, "Be Brilliant," should, in my opinion, get an extra day off.  Or perhaps a raise.  Or, at the very least, an ice-cream cone.  With extra sprinkles.

I have somehow ended up in a life where I listen to a lot of speeches.  As a child, my father was heavily involved in local and national politics.  Before I was 16, I had been to more pancake breakfasts, summer cookouts, and fundraisers that involved some semblance of oratory than most people will attend in their entire lifetimes.  Moving into adulthood, the context of the speeches may have changed, but the constancy of having them in my life remains the same.  Some are good--I learn new things, perhaps even feel inspired to try something differently and step out of my comfort zone.  Some lead me to say to myself, "Self, somewhere your life has gone off course.  I'm not sure when and I'm not sure where, but it has landed you here, in this room, listening to yet another speech."  Perhaps it is just one of the realities of being in a profession where you attend graduations, professional developments, and conferences on a regular basis.

All this being said, it takes the intersection of the subject of the speech, the power of the speaker, and my emotional attachment to the topic to produce a strong reaction.  All of these things came together in the keynote address this past Saturday evening.

Dan Savage has been a public figure for quite a while--he writes an adult-themed relationship column called Savage Love, and has also written numerous books such as The Kid, which shares how he and his husband, Terry, adopted their son through open adoption.  He, like all of us, has born witness to the deluge of media reports about LGBT youth, bullying, and suicide in the last several years.  A comment from a reader sparked an idea, and with the support of his husband, they shot the very first It Gets Better video.  The purpose behind the video was to give LGBT kids a link to their possible future selves, to give them hope that even if middle school and high school were difficult, there could be happiness and fulfillment in their adult lives:

Since this original video went live, thousands upon thousands of videos have been posted to the site representing the widely diverse LGBT community, all with the hope of inspiring LGBT youth to stay with us to see adult hood and find happiness and even joy.

Dan Savage also spoke to the fact that many students are bullied for a variety of reasons in schools.  However, many students who are bullied can go home to supportive families.  In the case of LGBT kids, they may go from a hostile environment in schools to a hostile environment at home, as families can often struggle with accepting their LGBT son or daughter, especially if this goes against deeply held personal beliefs.  Thus, these students are the most high-risk of all, because there is no safe space for them in their lives--neither school nor home.  This is where we, as school counselors, can play a crucial part in advocating for these students and letting them know that there is at least one adult in their lives who will support them as they work through the issues at school and the possible issues at home.

He went on to say that there are some things that school counselors can do to help make "life better" for LGBT students right now, in the moment, so that they do not necessarily have to wait until they grow up to feel safe and supported:

• Acknowledge the existence of LGBT students.  LGBT kids are in our schools.  They're in our classrooms, they are in our communities.  And they need support.
• Sponsor or support a Gay-Straight Alliance in your school.  Dan Savage said that even if a student never attends a meeting, the mere knowledge of the fact that there is a GSA that meets regularly in the school can give them hope.
• Make it known that there are Safe Spaces in your school.  One of the most visible ways to do this is to place a Safe Space sticker or poster in your office.  As another counselor pointed out to me, the sticker is only a start--you must then follow through with unconditional positive regard (hello, Carl Rogers) and empathy for it to truly mean something.
• Anti-gay bullying makes the whole school unsafe.  All bullying must be confronted.  Think about this--what message is being sent if some bullying is allowed?  It gives tacit permission that all bullying is okay.  Anti-gay bullying can happen to students who do not identify as LGBT--they may simply be perceived, for a variety of reasons, as LGBT, yet suffer the same consequences.  Work with your school administration and district to develop policies and procedures that make all bullying and harassment unacceptable.
• Don't forget the parents.  The coming-out process is difficult both for the student but also on the entire family.  Parents need our support, understanding, and resources as they work through this process with their children.  A great outside organization to point them towards is PFLAG.  You can find a local chapter through their website.

As school counselors, we can be leaders within our schools--we can help to educate our school personnel, we can advocate for policy and procedural change, and we can be visible support to our LGBT students.  Wouldn't it be wonderful if there wasn't a need for It Gets Better because things were great now?

For additional resources, check out Dan Savage's book, It Gets Better:

Also, I have written multiple blog posts about LGBT issues in school counseling and you can check out the resources under my Links and Books tab.

What's Your LGBT IQ?

A very interesting article appeared in the April 2012 Journal of Counseling & Development entitled, "Examining School Counseling Students' Multicultural and Sexual Orientation Competencies Through a Cross-Specialization Comparison."  (Biddell, 2012) That's a very long and wordy title, but basically the author studied the differences between community counselors and school counselors with regards to their knowledge on issues surrounding sexual orientation as well as the skills they have developed to support those who may identify as gay or lesbian.

The results were, at least in my mind, not surprising.  School counselors reported significantly lower  levels of multicultural and sexual orientation competencies as compared to those in community settings.  The author does point out some possible flaws in the study--small sample, not random, does not cover gender-identity, and the data is based on self-reporting. (Biddell, 2012)  However, as there have been very few studies on the topic of school counselor training and competence with regards to LGBT issues, it is certainly a starting-off point.  The author discusses some of the factors that he believes contribute to this lack of skill.  Schools are, generally, more conservative and under more public scrutiny than community counseling settings.  As such, teachers, counselors, and school staff can be made to fear for their jobs if they attempt to advocate for gay and lesbian students by such activities as sponsoring a Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA).  Further, while there is an expectation that counselor-education programs' multicultural courses cover sexual orientation, according to the author many programs and courses do not adequately prepare future school counselors to work with this subgroup.  For those programs that do devote trainings and classes to LGBT topics and skills, they tend to score higher on self-reported assessments of counselor competencies. (Biddell, 2012).

This certainly supports my own experiences in the field.  Northern Virginia is home to several strong, CACREP graduate programs in school counseling.  Yet, what I have heard from many colleagues is that this topic was left out or barely-covered in their programs.  Oftentimes there is simply only so much time in multicultural counseling courses and skills seminars, and coordinators and professors have to pick and choose what specific subgroups they may plan to cover.  I was at a conference this past year and attended a session about some of the latest research in counseling LGBT clients.  Afterwards, a director of a university counseling program began a discussion with the presenter about bringing them in, either in person or via webinar to do a similar presentation for the program's graduate students, as they currently did not have anything in the curriculum to cover that topic.  Thus, public schools are staffed with new school counselors who may have very little exposure and knowledge about working with LGBT students and families, or they have seasoned school counselors who have also never had training on this particular topic.  Why does this all matter?

There are several reasons why this knowledge gap needs to be filled in.  First, as I've written about here, and here, and here, students who either identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender (LGBT) or who are perceived as LGBT or gender-non-conforming are at a higher risk for being bullied, harassed, assaulted, for avoiding school, for lower-grades, and for dropping out (source: www.glsen.org).  If you have seen this video made by students in Illinois or watched as Kelby struggled with her Oklahoma school in the movie, Bully, you have some idea of what LGBT students face on a daily basis.  As school counselors, one of our primary missions, according to our national organization, the American School Counselor Association, is to remove barriers for students to academic success.  It is thus one of our missions to make sure that all of our students, regardless of sexual orientation, gender identity, or perceived sexual orientation or gender identity, are able to feel safe in school so that instead of avoiding classes, students, and teachers who may harass and bully them, they are instead in classes with supportive adults and peers, focusing only on the academic material at hand.  Secondly, it is an ethical mandate of the American School Counselor Association.

From the preamble of the ethical code (addition of boldface is mine):

"Each person has the right to be respected, be treated with dignity and have access to a comprehensive school counseling program that advocates for and affirms all students from diverse populations including: ethnic/racial identity, age, economic status, abilities/ disabilities, language, immigration status, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity/expression, family type, religious/spiritual identity and appearance." (source: www.schoolcounselor.org)

E.2.b:

"Develop competencies in how prejudice, power and various forms of oppression, such as ableism, ageism, classism, familyism, genderism, heterosexism, immigrationism, linguicism, racism, religionism, and sexism, affect self, students and all stakeholders." (source: www.schoolcounselor.org)

E.2.c:

"Acquire educational, consultation and training experiences to improve awareness, knowledge, skills and effectiveness in working with diverse populations: ethnic/racial status, age, economic status, special needs, ESL or ELL, immigration status, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity/expression, family type, religious/spiritual identity and appearance." (source: www.schoolcounselor.org)

Thus, it is our professional responsibility as school counselors to serve and respect LGBT students, regardless of our own personal feelings and views on the topic of homosexuality and gender identity, and also to seek out professional development opportunities and education if we do not feel we possess the knowledge and skills necessary to adequately work with those students.  If you did not receive it in your graduate program, whether it was last year or 20 years ago, you should seek out opportunities to further your education on this topic.  Third, there are now legal implications for schools and school systems who are found to be unsupportive of LGBT students.  The Anoka-Hennapin school district in Minnesota recently settled a lawsuit concerning bullying and harassment of LGBT students.  This week the Hanover school district in Pennsylvania is in the spotlight because of alleged harassment of a gay student by a teacher.  The student's mother has not yet retained legal counsel, but she has enlisted the help of a local LGBT affirming group to support both her and her son through the situation.  Lastly, if you are in elementary school or middle school, you may be thinking to yourself that this is really only an issue for high-school counselors and their students.  Think again.  A recent study by GLSEN discusses the prevalence of bullying gender-non-conforming children in elementary schools as well as the sometimes unwelcoming environment same-sex parents find when they go into their child's school.  Further, various reports over the last couple of years state that more and more middle-school students are coming-out of the closet as gay or lesbian at earlier ages.  This is an topic that effects all school counselors at all stages of child development.

So, how do you begin to acquire this knowledge?:

• Read articles in professional publications.  ASCA won an award for their School Counselor magazine that focused on LGBT issues in schools.  ASCA also does the magazine, published three times a year, for many states.  The Spring edition was about bullying, and featured an article by yours truly on how homophobic language hurts all students--check out page 18 in the Kansas edition.   Counseling Today, the monthly magazine put out by the American Counseling Association, regularly features articles on LGBT issues in counseling.  You can also find articles about the topic on the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network (GSLEN) website.
• Attend conferences.  The national American School Counselor Association conference is coming up in June, and there are at least three LGBT specific sessions to be found.  Further, if you belong to your state school-counselor association, or any other local counseling chapters, there are bound to be conferences and professional developments about this topic.  If you are unable to find something on LGBT issues in schools, look for topics such as LGBT issues and children or adolescents, LGBT families, bullying and harassment, etc.  Any workshop that adds to your knowledge base of LGBT issues, in general, is only going to help your work with your students and families.
• Explore online options.  ASCA is doing a series of webinars.  One of them in February explored supporting LGBTQ youth, and one coming up in October will look specifically at creating a safe-and-supportive environment for all elementary school students, including those who are gender-non-conforming.  GLSEN also sponsors webinars on LGBT topics in schools and with youth.  I would also recommend taking a look at a class through Rutgers on LGBTQ topics in schools--it covers the basics and gets you thinking about how you would deal with certain situations in your own school and district.
• Ask for professional development in your school and/or district.  This may be something you have to feel out a bit, but if there are enough counselors in your school or district who feel this is a need, maybe it is time to have a discussion with your central office about getting a workshop.  Maybe you or someone else in your district has enough knowledge that you/they could present?  If not, you can look to GLSEN or Rutgers for some additional support in either having a training or having someone help you to develop your own training for your school. 

Anytime you can share an article with other professionals in your building--teachers, administrators--the more you also be educating your whole building on the issues pertaining to LGBT students and families.  If you do decide to do an online training or attend a conference session, see if you can get another counselor or principal in your building to attend with you.  Is it possible to get a whole-school training on the topic?  Given the prevalence of LGBT bullying and harassment in schools that is currently being portrayed in the media, now may be the time that you can get community buy-in to have some professional development on this topic.  Regardless, whether it is your whole school, a small group, or just you as an individual, it is important that all school counselors become familiar with the risk-factors present for LGBT students as well as best-practices for how to assist them.  If you have not yet dealt with this issue in your job, I can almost promise you that you will at some point.  When that time comes, it will benefit both you and the student/family if you have already gained knowledge, familiarity, and a certain level of comfort with this topic versus flying blind.  Further, by getting this information, you will be best able to lead your whole school community in ethically and properly supporting a middle school student who comes out of the closet, an elementary school student who was born a male but who identifies as female, or a gay high-school student who has special considerations when applying to colleges.  Thus, in the future, there is hope that studies will no longer show that school counselors lack competency to support these students as they move towards academic success.

The following article was sited within this blog post:
Bidell, M. (2012).  Examining school counseling students' multicultural and sexual orientation competencies through a cross-specialization comparison.  Journal of Counseling and Development 90, 200-207.

Dear 40-year-old Me

This video has been put out by the Illinois Safe Schools Alliance, an organization that helps kids in Illinois advocate for safe schools and an end to bullying and harassment of LGBT teens.  If you have never worked with LGBT youth, some of what they share may shock you.  Not only are these kids at a higher risk of harassment and bullying at school but they can also face harassment and estrangement from their families.  Imagine being a teenager and losing your support system at home.  This is why school counselors and supportive staff and adults at school can be so important.  It is clear that the Safe Schools Alliance has helped to give these children hope and taught them how to advocate for themselves, whether at their own schools or at a legislative level, to effect change.  As a result, their futures, 40 years from now or otherwise, look bright.

Reflection: The Bully Movie

By now, I'm pretty sure most school counselors have heard of the movie, Bully, either from the publicity concerning the controversy over its rating, or from parents, students, or colleagues who are talking about it.  For those of in education, I think it has been one of the most anticipated major release films in a long time.  As school counselors, we tend to be pretty aware of the issue of bullying, as we are often some of the first people that students and parents come to when there is a concern.  Further, we work hard to implement preventative measures in our schools like the Olweus program, and we also employ mediation skills, such as restorative justice, to help resolve conflicts while teaching empathy skills.  Before the movie was released, the questions that seemed to be on everyone's mind was about whether the film would reflect what bullying truly looks like in our schools, and whether all of the various stakeholders (parents, students, school personnel, police) would be reflected in an honest way.

In the film, there are some narratives that are very powerful and, I believe, reflective of some of the realities of our students.  The story of Alex, a student who ultimately gets beaten-up on a bus by another high-school student, will resonate with many of us.  Kelby, the gay student in Oklahoma who is ostracized and harassed at her school by students and teachers alike.  Ja'Meya, a young woman who ultimately fights back, but in a way that changes her own life forever.  Because the film-makers had such unlimited access to these children, they are able to show the impact that the bullying has had on the students and their families, and, in the case of Alex, what the bullying actually looks like on a day-to-day basis.  That is, I think, the film's strength: allowing the audience to empathize and feel what the bullying has done to these adolescents.  Alex undergoes daily harassment, and yet seems to indicate at one point that the people who are harassing him are his "friends."  Kelby, by the end, no longer feels comfortable attending school.  Ja'Meya is incarcerated for a period of time, with the charges ultimately being dropped, but it is fairly clear that the bullying and resulting incident have taken a large emotional toll on both her and her family.  There are moments of hope, strength, and resiliency--Kelby and her family having grown closer and stronger through the adversity, for example.  Ultimately, I would recommend that school counselors make an effort to also see the movie, but there are some things that I believe should be taken into account.

• Do some prep work beforehand, especially if you are going in a group.  There is a guide available at FacingHistory.org that has activities for adults and students alike both before going to see the movie as well as after.  They include definitions of bullying, ostracism, and synopses with guiding questions to help as you are watching the film, and then discussion questions and role-plays to follow-up.  If you are using the film as a teaching tool or a call to action, these materials can help to make any work done before and/or after much more meaningful and structured.
• Understand that this is a film that has been edited to fit the director's vision.  This may sound harsh, but it is very clearly explained in the guide by the director himself.  The filmmakers spent a year filming a multitude of stories and at a multitude of schools, and many things did not make it into the film as they did not fit the "dramatic arc." They filmed at a high-school in Sioux City in addition to the middle school: 

"West [High School] had and continues to have really strong and good leadership, and a really strong mentoring program. The difference in culture was like night and day. You could feel it when you walked into the building. You felt it immediately that you were in a different kind of place, where people treated each other better. Ultimately we weren’t able to piece together a story out of West, in part because good climate and culture don’t manifest themselves as drama...the West High stories were really, really hard to leave out. It was the same kind of phone call: 'Hey we filmed in your school for an entire year, but you’re not in the movie. Why? Because you were doing things too well.'"  (Facing History and Ourselves, 2012). 

It is important to know this because the director has clearly organized and selected scenes from the movie for the purpose of evoking certain emotions.  Feeling moved to anger, frustration, laughter, etc. by the stories included is natural, but understand that the film is edited to help you access those feelings.

• On that note, the film does not depict programs that have succeeded in helping to create a school-culture that does not tolerate bullying.  This was one thing that concerned me about the film--it does not show examples of programs that have worked, of schools that have gotten a handle on bullying successfully.  There are some parts of the guide that seem to be "Olweus" inspired, but the film seems to be a call-to-action and a catalyst for discussion more than a means of offering solutions to the issue.  As school counselors, we should be prepared to fill in this gap and share information about successful programs if we are using this as a means to begin dialogue on the topic within our school communities. 
• Be careful of making the leap from bullying to suicide.  Two articles were forwarded to me by colleagues this week about the film.  The first, from the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, is concerned with the film's depiction of bullying being a cause of suicide for two of the stories in the film.  The article wants to make clear that bullying can be a trigger for mental illnesses such as depression which can, in extreme cases, lead to suicide, but that bullying is almost never a direct "cause of suicide.  Further, in a Slate.com article, there are some concerns that the mental illness of one of the students in the film who committed suicide was left out of the story entirely, leaving the viewers to conclude that it was the bullying that drove him to kill himself, when in reality it may have been one of many triggers or compounding factors of his mental illness.

Overall, I believe this is an important movie that shines a light on a serious issue for our students.  However, as school counselors we must be able to separate the emotions conveyed in the film from facts and research.  If we are able to view this film with background knowledge of how it was edited, the director's intent, as well as an understanding of how bullying and suicide are linked and how they are not, it can be a very powerful and eye-opening tool for us as well as our school communities.

The following guide was referenced in this post:
Facing History and Ourselves. (2012) A guide to the film BULLY: fostering empathy and action in our schools.  Facing History and Ourselves National Foundation, Inc: Brookline, MA.
Thanks to Valerie Hardy of FCPS and Dr. Erin Mason for the two articles on the movie and its depiction of suicide.

Day of Silence

Wednesday, April 20, 2012 has been designated to be this year's Day of Silence.  For those of you who may not be aware, the Day of Silence is a day each year in which students take a vow of silence in order to draw attention to the silencing effects of anti-LGBT bullying and harassment.  The first Day of Silence was in 1996 at the University of Virginia, and since then has grown to an event in which over 8,000 middle schools, high schools, and colleges participate annually. (source:www.dayofsilence.org)  There are many different supporters of this event around the country, from high-fashion to television anchors.  Further, students around the nation create their own videos to enlist support:

Oftentimes, Gay-Straight Alliances (GSA's) will organize events throughout the day, signing students up to participate, advertising through posters and through school announcements, and even holding a rally at the end of the day to Break the Silence.  It is always advised that students follow the following guidelines:

• Do talk about participation with school administrators.  Even if there is some fear that there won't be school support, it is important for students to discuss this with their Principals, Assistant Principals, and Directors of Student Activities.  One of the overarching aims of the Day of Silence is to draw awareness to the extensive bullying and harassment of all students--this can be an opportunity for students to actively educate school administration on the issues.  As I've talked about before, LGBT students or students who are perceived to be LGBT are at a much higher risk of being bullied and harassed.  Students can find statistics here about LGBT bullying and harassment.  By working together with school administration, students can plan a successful day that will garner support and work within school or district policy for student-led events.
• Know their rights with regards to participation.  The general rule of thumb for the Day of Silence is that students can remain silent between classes and at lunch.  However, if a teacher asks a direct question of a student during class as part of the instructional process, then they do need to respond and participate.  However, students are encouraged to discuss their planned participation ahead of time with their teachers.  This can have many positive effects, ranging from the teacher being respectful of that student remaining silent throughout his/her class, the teacher designing an instructional activity for the whole class that involves silence, or the teacher becoming more aware of the issues behind the Day of Silence.
• Use this as an opportunity for education.  As previously discussed, students who are participating should attempt to discuss the issue of bullying and harassment with administrators and teachers.  Further, students should help to educate their peers and community at large, as well.  This can be done with their friends, one-on-one, or students can organize with a larger group, like their GSA, and perhaps have information during lunches, put together videos (like the one above) to be aired on the school news, or, as previously mentioned, organize a rally for the end of the day to Break the Silence.

As counselors, there are many ways that we can show support for the students who choose to participate in this event.  You may already be serving as your school's GSA advisor and are thus involved in supporting the students through the planning process.  If students are apprehensive about approaching school administration, you could be an ally and agree to go with them as they ask for support.  As you go around the school on April 20, you could simply show support by smiling at students or giving them a thumbs up as you see participants in the hallways, or you could place a Safe Space sticker in your office window as a sign to all students that you are a support to LGBT students.  Additionally, you could help to address any bullying or harassment of Day of Silence participants that you may witness.  If you want more detail and thoughts about how you or other educators can best support students on this day, take a look at the educator's guide.  GLSEN is also running a blog about the Day of Silence, and you can look at both the GLSEN and Day of Silence websites for more information.

Note--much of the information presented in this blog post was found at www.dayofsilence.org.