Pender County Schools’ Director of Student Services Leanne Radabaugh was one of dozens of North Carolina educators who attended the World Anti-Bullying Forum this year.
The UNC School of Education hosted the forum’s first ever convening in the United States this week at the Raleigh Convention Center. Researchers from around the globe came to share their latest work in the realm of bullying prevention.
The university took the opportunity to invite educators from 15 North Carolina school districts to attend.
“We would never have been able to attend, much less bring nine people, if we could not drive here,” Radabaugh said.
Educators from Wake, Mecklenburg, Granville, Chatham and Rockingham counties, and Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools were among those who attended. Pender County Schools used federal funding to help send a team of 10 administrators, counselors and social workers.
WUNC asked Radabaugh and her team to share some of their takeaways from the conference, and this is what they had to say:
Bullying is not a problem with individual students. We need to look at it through a systemic lens and address the way we build inclusive communities for all.
“We have to take care of the person who's doing the bullying just as much as we have to take care of the victims in order to stop it,” Radabaugh says. “Consequences aren't enough, or bullying would be stopped by now.”
Educators learned about UNESCO’s proposed definition for bullying, which describes it as a “social process” based on a power imbalance driven by social norms.
“We can't solve the issue of bullying in our schools, in our communities, by addressing it one kid at the time,” Radabaugh says. “We need to look at how we build our culture and our climate in our schools.”
Bullying is as prevalent as ever, but the persistence is changing.
Bullying is hardly a new phenomenon, but with the advent of social media, students are more likely to experience it around the clock.
“Where bullying may have just occurred in the school yard 15 years ago, now, it can just be a relentless activity that kids can't get away from and don't get away from,” Radabaugh says.
Bullying is a worldwide concern. We need to learn from each other and lean upon the work of others to solve this problem.
Researchers from across the globe attended the biennial World Anti-Bullying Forum to share their latest work.
“The kind of research that's going on worldwide mirrors problems that we have here,” Radabaugh says.
Her team was interested in solutions being implemented in schools around the world. For example, they learned about a model in Latin America that employs a “coexistence manager” in schools whose job it is to manage climate and culture.
Bullying has far-reaching and lifelong effects on mental health.
“The effects of what happened to children in our schools, the research shows, it sticks with them throughout their adult life and affects anxiety, depression, suicidal ideation, not just when it's happening,” Radabaugh says.
The conference's lead organizer, Dorothy Espelage, is the William C. Friday Distinguished Professor of Education at the UNC School of Education. For the last 30 years, she's been a leader in research on preventing bullying among children.
Espelage says North Carolina has been at the forefront of that academic research, but it hasn't yet translated to policy initiatives in schools.
“I want parents to understand that there's very little bullying prevention going on in the state of North Carolina, and it's going to take us to do these types of convenings to get that back on the radar,” Espelage says.
