Bullying Prevention
Bullying is a national epidemic. For the most part, our country has moved beyond “kids will be kids,” to recognize the damage caused by bullying. This awareness, however, has done little to quash bullying. Every year, seventy-five percent of American students are impacted by bullying either as the victim or the perpetrator. During the course of the school year hundreds of thousands of students skip school, at a serious cost to their education, GPAs, and graduation rates. The high rate of absenteeism due to bullying results in staggering financial loss to schools. And most tragically, our young students are still committing suicide as a result of “murder by bullying.” O’Grady Solutions is incredibly proud of our Bullying Prevention work. Our bully prevention programs sit at the core of our mission to Transform the Way People See People. Our bullying prevention work, literally save lives, makes school safer for students and teachers, and is helping to stamp out bullying.
Policy and Procedures
Every states either has laws, policies or both that require schools to act against bullying. Many of these include mandated reporting of bullying, and require schools to have a reporting system in place that protects the identity of the victim. If you don’t know what is required of your school, we can advise you. If you wish to put policies and procedures in place, we can design them for you. Transgender students face the highest levels of bullying of any student population. California now requires schools to provide equal access to accommodations and activities based on a student’s self-identified gender. Other states are moving in this direction. O’Grady Solutions can help you find the most effective and sensitive ways to make any changes and adopt policies. We have a great deal of experience working with school boards to implement change.
Workshops/Education
O’Grady School Solutions partners with schools and educators to provide first-rate trainings and services to support bullying prevention work. We want to be honest: None of our trainers have a silver bullet that will rid your school of bullying after one training. Nor do we offer big emotion laden assemblies that leave people in tears but with no real skills. We specialize in providing administrators, teachers, and students the knowledge and skills needed to carry forward your bullying prevention work across the school year. We offer ongoing coaching, school sites coordinators, and we teach you a range of activities to continue bullying prevention work on your campuses.
Cultural Change
Every organization has a defining culture that promotes particular values. It is shaped by the traditions and norms of a school, the daily interactions between teachers and students. It is impact by the type of speech that is condone or not condoned. The challenge is ensuring your school’s culture aligns with the values you want the organization to reflect.
Most importantly, does your school (or district) culture inadvertently promote bullying or other less desirable behaviors? We’ve developed personalized and specific strategies to help schools achieve these goals, including: Working with stakeholders across campus to assess the current campus climate; developing a comprehensive action plan to help schools and districts reflect upon and redefine their cultures; providing administrators and teachers with the skills to carefully remove internal and external obstacles to the school’s vision; aligning school-wide and classroom policies to enhance the campus community.