Reboot: Responding to Bullying Behaviors with Dr. Alli Cipra

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

bullying, kids, bullied, talk, middle school, teacher, school, children, resilience, victim, adults, happening, work, parents, amy, research, behavior, educators, problem, experience

SPEAKERS

Amy Vujaklija, Joi Patterson, Alli Cipra

Alli Cipra: 00:03

If someone beats you up in the playground, it's over. If you're getting bullied online, you can't escape it. It's everywhere.

Amy Vujaklija: 00:11

This episode was originally released under the podcast titled teaching and learning theory versus practice. This rebooted episode has been migrated to teaching and leading with Dr. Amy and Dr. Joy. I am Dr. Amy Vujaklija, Director of educator preparation. And I am Dr. Joy Patterson, Chief Diversity Officer. Our podcast addresses issues through the lens of diversity, equity and inclusion, along with solutions for us to grow as educators. So join us on our journey to become better teachers and leaders. So let's get into it. Good morning, Dr. Joi.

Joi Patterson: 00:56

Good morning. Dr. Amy, how are you today?

Amy Vujaklija: 00:59

Well, I am doing quite well. I'm really interested in this conversation though. It kind of brings up some bad memories for me.

Joi Patterson: 01:12

So we're going to talk about what today we're going to talk about bullying.

Amy Vujaklija: 01:16

Absolutely.

Joi Patterson: 01:18

And what kind of memories does it bring that for?

Amy Vujaklija: 01:20

You don't want to remember middle school, middle school was not fun. Maybe there were some fun parts.

Joi Patterson: 01:28

But a kids in middle school can be mean.

Amy Vujaklija: 01:32

Yes, in lots of different ways. Sometimes it's overt with mocking or teasing or name calling. But sometimes it's very subtle. Uh huh. Teachers might not notice some of these subtleties that happen in middle school. But usually, whenever they're getting to that early adolescent age, it's pretty obvious dislikes among different groups, or who's getting picked on.

Joi Patterson: 02:01

Alright, so were you ever bullied or what you will consider to be bullied at the time when you were in middle school?

Amy Vujaklija: 02:07

Oh, at the time? Absolutely. I had maybe disagreements with other girlfriends or was kind of on the outs sometimes, depending on what the fad or the fashion was. Yeah, I think there were a lot of uncomfortable times in middle school.

Joi Patterson: 02:28

So I went to middle school. I was in a parochial school. So I was in a Catholic school. So I can't recall any bullying, because it was a K eight. And I think K eight are different than middle grades for good and bad reasons. But they're different. And being in a parochial school, I think made it different now may have been bullied by the nuns, but not my peers. But what makes me a little emotional today is that my son was bullied what I would perceive to be bullied when he was in middle school. And he had come from a parochial school after sixth grade and now he's in a public middle school. And his first week there, he was beat up in the bathroom by two boys. And they talked about his generic shoes. So I mean, it was really hurtful to me. I know kids are resilient. But it was at the time, it was very painful for me, as a parent, I felt the need to intervene. And I do think is helpful when adults can intervene really, really quickly. But sometimes kids don't even let us know. And they endure so much bullying for a long time because they want to fit in. They want to fit in and they don't want this person to get in trouble because they think that could make things worse. Right?

Amy Vujaklija: 03:54

Exactly. Now, I went to a K eight parochial school as well. But the seventh and eighth grade was a little separate and treated more like a junior high. So perhaps that's the difference. And we were trying to branch out and be your own person and test those grounds and test the boundaries. We're going to talk to someone today who can help us think about bullying in lots of different ways. Who's the bully who gets bullied and what to do about it? Yes, Dr. Alli Cipra earned a dual bachelor degree in psychology and law in society from Purdue University. She earned an MS and a PhD in human development with a minor in brain sciences from Indiana University. Dr. cifra currently teaches developmental courses, bio psychology, social psychology, thinking and writing in psychology, research and statistics core CES and general education courses. Dr. Cipra also established and now directs the Social Development Lab at Governor State University. This interdisciplinary lab accepts students from all programs of study, and provides them with the opportunity to engage in research within a lab setting. And to present research at internal and external conferences. Dr. Cipra involved in research focusing on underrepresented groups in a university setting, transition to college program evaluation, family inter relational processes in child temperament, and broader social variables, including resiliency and bullying. Welcome to our podcast.

Alli Cipra: 05:52

Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Joi Patterson: 05:54

You are a rock star. This is a topic that Dr. Amy and I have wanted to address for a while now. So we have that. And then you're like the superstar that I wanted to have on the podcast for a long time. So to have you discussed this topic on bullying, it's just special for us. Before you came on, Dr. Amy and I, we were talking about our experiences in middle school and if we've ever been bullied, and it's things like why does everyone go back to middle school? We'll talk about that. So, you know, why is it always Middle School, where we start talking about bullying. And her experience was different than mine. I can't recall any bullying. But I was talking about my son who went to seventh grade, he went to a new school. It was like his first or second day, he was beat up in the bathroom by some boys who were talking about his generic gym shoes. I think I was more hurt than he was. And my husband was a teacher at the school. So there could have been that to some jealousy. And of course, my husband went out and got him the best pair of gym shoes the next day, like I told you not to get him gym shoes. So all that's important and bullying, but I don't even know if that's considered bullying because he's had some incidents, there's incidents right? And there's bullying. Tell us what is bullying and the different types of bullying and maybe how this has changed over time because we hear different types of bullying now than when Amy and I were in middle school.

Alli Cipra: 07:30

Yes, absolutely. So I think what your child experienced was terrible physical aggression. But unless it was a repeated instance, unless it happened multiple times, it wasn't actually bullying. So that is one of the main defining features of bullying versus other types of aggression. Bullying has to be repeated your repeated target for bullying. And it can be different types of aggression that you experience but from the same person or persons. And again, it's repeated over two to three instances minimum. A lot of these schools have the zero tolerance policy because they're trying to do anti bullying. And I'm not saying they shouldn't do these types of policies, just that it's not actually working on bullying, it's working on typically physical aggression and violence, which again, if it's not repeated, it doesn't fall into the category of bullying. So question, I was a helicopter parent, I'll admit it could something like what he experienced potentially turn into bullying, if there's no action by adults, whether the parent or the administration or the teacher? Oh, yes, absolutely. Most bullying is the result of inaction by the victim or by adults in the area. Because Amy and I were talking about the kids, they don't want to tell each other they don't want to be a snitch because really, they want this person to be their friend. So telling just makes things worse. Back to the other question, how has bullying changed over time? What are some of the new things that we hear about bullying, like cyber bullying and things like that? So bullying has actually increased quite a bit when we think about it. Because in previous generations, if you were bullied at school people talked about you or spread rumors about you relational bullying, right? Or they physically picked on you. That's your physical bullying, but when you went home, that was it. But now with social media, that's not it. Kids have all sorts of devices, they're on social media, they have cell phones for texting, and kids are getting bullied at higher rates with electronic means. So cyber bullying is one of the primary methods unfortunately of bullying, and it's even worse, you might think, well, it's worse to be hit. It's really not. If someone beats you up in the playground, it's over. If you're getting bullied online, you can't escape it. It's everywhere. It's happening. School on the school forums on the forums that the kids don't think the schools are monitoring. It's happening on their social media accounts, their Twitter and even tick tock, which I'm not sure how involved you guys are in that I really don't get super involved in more of the modern social media except to know what it is and how it impacts my children and my research. But there are even these challenges and trends on tick tock, which are really actually pretty intense and can fit into bullying behaviors for children. I think the main thing is because of the progression of technology, and social media and all of that bullying has become more intense, and it follows them everywhere. There's no escape,

Amy Vujaklija: 10:42

I want to talk about your research for just a minute, and we'll come back to it as well. But what motivated you in the beginning to start your research on bullying?

Alli Cipra: 10:52

I'm really not sure what my initial interest was. But once I started it, I started thinking about my time in middle school. Right? So I don't know, are we going in middle school? Yeah, and I would love to touch on as we progress, why that's kind of the starting point, the key point and bullying. So I think I got involved initially, because some of my doctoral work was on family systems, and I was looking mostly at children and bedtime routines and within the family structure. And sometimes I would see that when parents would have the most difficulty getting their kids into a bedtime routine, because I was looking at sleep routines and their impact on learning, I would see that a lot of times the parents and the kids will be fighting back and forth. And they argue and it's not really bullying, but it's that kind of, oh, this doesn't feel like a positive environment, right. And then I started thinking, well, when else are they seeing this, and the older kids in this study kept some sleep journals, as did their parents. But some of the older kids would also keep little diaries that weren't part of the study. But sometimes we've learned some of the things in our interviews, and many of these kids would say things about, you know, I get made fun of that school. And I'm they get upset by this. And it really impacts a lot of different things. And I kind of left it there for a while. And I went to another university. And then when I came to GSU, I was asked to do some analysis, some stats analysis, I'm a bit of a data geek, on a project that had collected data on bullying. And I looked at the data and had a lot of work to do, they didn't have a statistician involved in the design. So anybody out there, if you think you're gonna bring in a statistician at the end, bring them in at the beginning, bring them in at the design. But what we found was that bullying is a much bigger problem than most people realized at the time. And we were looking at middle school ages. And when I think back to my middle school, you think of like, there are a couple of kids that get bullied by a lot of people, right. But most people experience or are otherwise involved in bullying during their middle school years. In one role or another. It made me think back it's funny, the gym shoes thing. I grew up with very little money, and I had la gear gym shoes, and they were not the cool gym shoes to have. And I got made fun of it was more relational because I've always been a bit of an Amazon woman. I'm pretty tall. But yeah, there was a lot of tea. And now you're like a model. Well, I would definitely not say that.

Joi Patterson: 13:28

But how that ship I remember my like you can remember your gym shoes. It was Shaquille O'Neal's gym shoes, they got my son beat up. And really how because Shaq actually came out with a designer gym shoe that kids could afford. Talk to us more about the roles involved in bullying. A lot of times we talk about the victim of bullying and bullying and how to help them those who have been victims. But tell us about who is the bully because we're talking about middle school and kids. This is a kid who who was the bully.

Alli Cipra: 14:05

First. We typically study three main roles in bullying. You have the bully, you have the victim, you have the bully victims, but there are actually five roles that are talked about in research. So you have the bully, you have the victim, you have both the bully victim, you have the bystander and you have someone who's uninvolved. What we found is very few people are completely uninvolved. So this means they're not seeing it. They're not part of it. They're not experiencing it. I don't know about you, but I would have thought prior to starting this research, I would have thought that that was the majority of kids but it's not. And then the bystanders, this whole other thing we can talk about sometimes it's called the observer in research, but the victims and the bullies so the victims and the perpetrators and the bully victims so they participate in both roles are pretty common. We used to think that the bully was the kid who had a really bad home life who was maybe bullied out Home by their parents. And while that can be true, that's not the majority of what we see, we actually see a very large number of kids participating in both being a bully and being bullied. So they're the bully victims. So if they're being bullied by kids in their gym class, they might then bully kids in another class. We do know that sometimes these kids have difficult home lives. Sometimes they have lower self esteem. Sometimes they're being bullied by others. But there's not a clear like, this is the bully. This is why they're just so many other factors. And I think a lot of that goes back into cyber bullying because even the nicest sweetest kid feels a little bit of power when they can be anonymous, or when they don't have to face the person that they're bullying, when they can do it from behind a screen

Amy Vujaklija: 15:54

does that change? Who is most likely to be bullied? That was my next question. In our middle school years, there might have been that standout child is most likely to be bullied. You were talking about clothing, as was Joi. What you said about the cyber bullying could really change who is most likely?

Alli Cipra: 16:17

Yes, absolutely. So I think when the three of us were in school, there were the kids that you knew were gonna get picked on. You just knew it. And then there were the kids who were kind of picked on because of some sort of social faux pas, or, you know, wearing the wrong clothes. I still remember when I was in seventh grade, somebody laughed so hard, they peed their pants, they were known as Pee Pants until they graduated. Terrible, right? When it's, it's either, yeah, we know that kid's gonna get bullied. And in the past, it's often been the kids who are lower socioeconomic status, because they don't have the right clothes or shoes, or whatever. Or oftentimes the heavier kids were bullied. But then again, the kids who do something, right, they do something, whether it's innocuous or not. And that is the trigger to the other kids that oh, we can make fun of them. Or we can do something. Now it's very, very different. Groups are very different now. Well, you to probably go in the school systems quite frequently. But when I was in school, we have all of these really kind of standard cliques, right. You have the jocks, you have the brainiacs or the nerds, you had the music geeks, you had the theater, kids, you had all of these different groups, the preppy kids. And now a lot of kids actually kind of move between groups a little more, which can be a good thing, but I'm not really sure if now we're able to pinpoint why someone might be a victim of bullying because there is more social movement. Yeah, there's still the whole Queen Bee and their entourage at the top. And that gets into the whole socio metric status about are you pro social popular? Are you anti social, popular, all of that stuff. So we still have some of that. But now with things being online, you can be bullied for other things. So one of my children is 11. And she is not allowed to be on Facebook or Tik Tok or anything like that. But she can do kids messenger because I can monitor everything. And one of her friends sixth grade was sad because she was getting picked on online because her parents posted a Christmas picture of them. And apparently she looked terrible in the picture. And people started making fun of her. This is the hard part, we don't have an answer because there isn't one answer. And that's kind of why I transition between bullying and resilience. The anti bullying is the prevention part. But we can't prevent it all. And there's more than just bullying that kids have to overcome. And that's why I move into resilience.

Joi Patterson: 18:51

Right? So maybe it's more why the person is being a bully than it is those who are being bullied because now they have the freedom to be so different that they can be bullied for 1000 different reasons. But there's something key about a person is doing a bullying. When I was a middle grades teacher and an administrator Amy was also a middle grades teacher, maybe that's why we became middle grades teacher. So we saw a lot of that too, but actually listed laws and my class and penalties for breaking the laws. My first law was you couldn't interrupt someone else's education. So there's a lot that can go under that. Right. You could not interrupt or interfere with someone else's education. And then I also have bullying on there because I thought that was just so important. I felt really really bad for kids that were being bullied, but I would call a bully, a bully in a heartbeat. You're a bully. This is why you are a bully. And I think that actually had an impact and gives them something to think about my husband, retired middle grade teacher according to years, he's probably broken up at least three dozen fights pieces, there's that aggressor, and there's the person who's just trying to save space. And he just feels so heavily for that person that's just trying to save face, they really don't want to fight. And he just feels like he needs to be their protector just stop the fight, you know, so he gives him the ball. What are some of the real laws related to bullying? How are people protected?

Alli Cipra: 20:27

First, I really want to say I liked what you said. You said, Okay, so we can't really identify the victims. But it's something about the people doing the bullying something about the bullies themselves. I think that's absolutely true. And that's why I think socio emotional education is so important. Because if we can teach empathy, and we can teach perspective taking, then maybe we produce fewer bullies, that makes sense. But in terms of the actual laws that are there to protect, I want to first say, I am not a legal scholar, so I'm going to talk in generalities. But we do have both state by state policies. And I know that actually, all three of us work in Illinois and live in Indiana. So that's interesting. So there are differences between Indiana and Illinois, Illinois actually has more stringent regulations than Indiana does for physical violence. But there are a handful of federal laws about bullying. And they generally come out after a serious tragedy, like a school shooting, that's really when these things started coming to the attention of most people as this is an epidemic, something that we have to do something about, because what we would find is that the kids who took out all the aggression they been experiencing on other people, we found that at least in the beginning, in the in the 90s, a lot of those kids had been picked on and bullied for years and years by multiple people, multiple groups. So we thought, well, we should do something about this bullying, so it doesn't progress. And that doesn't impact the individual so much. But it's a whole nother story now, because now it's not so much the bullies that are engaging in school wide violence, right now, it's a lot about making a name and being infamous. And so that's a whole nother thing. But we do have some federal laws to protect kids who are being bullied, but the more effective ones are actually at the school district level, what the school policies are, tend to be more effective, because they're easier to enact. And it's easier to say, look, here's our guideline, this is our policy, you violated it. That's a much faster process than bringing any sort of like criminal charge against someone. And we're hoping that the school policies are a stopgap so that it can change the outcome so that we stop it here. And it's not going to progress to the point that we have to bring legal action.

Amy Vujaklija: 22:51

But something has to be identified. So what should students do when they're being bullied? Because we don't often see it happening, especially with cyber bullying, we might not have access to some of these platforms and see what's happening. So what should students do to be advocates for themselves?

Alli Cipra: 23:14

That's a wonderful question. And it's a tricky one, because we've always been saying talent, adult tele responsible adult, but in some cases, that makes the blean Worse, right? Because now, okay, I'm not going to make fun of you in front of the teacher in the hallway, but I'm going to amp up what I'm doing online, that is a good option, especially for the younger kids, because younger kids are still kind of looking at the teachers as the authority figures they are. But once you get to middle school, these kids are starting to figure out who they want to be this identity development is the trigger for some of these behaviors that we see. It really depends on the environment, the culture of the school, or the kid group, as well as the type of bullying. You guys probably heard the same thing I heard growing up telling adults or if you stand up to a bully, they'll stop. Sometimes that works. Sometimes it doesn't. So my goal is to provide children with as many possible solutions to the problem that I can. So if it doesn't work to tell an adult or it's not going to work to stand up to them, then what do you do?

Joi Patterson: 24:21

Sometimes adults get too involved, and we could talk about that later. But you know, I want to talk about the long term effects of being bullied or being a bully or someone who's been fully but what I think about my son and we laugh about this all the time, because I told you there were two major times where he was actually assaulted by this also happen at church where he was jumped by some kids. So as a result, he is an Iron Man. He has a body of steel and his profession. We can take anybody on now. So he chose a profession where he's a protector and I think that his experience which was really impactful has really shaped his adult life and how he carries himself. He's a type personality, how he cares for his body and the career that he chose. So what is the long term effects of being bullied, whether you're the bully or someone that's being bullied,

Alli Cipra: 25:22

the long term effects are contingent on a few key factors, one being personality, personality of the victim, and another being resilience. So it sounds like your son has a strong personality, and he's very resilient. So he took all of these bad things that were happening and use them as motivation, right? That works really well for people who are like him. For people who don't have coping mechanisms or good problem solving skills or who don't have as strong personalities and artists resilient, that's not going to work, they're not going to use it as motivation, it's just going to be another thing that proves to them that they're not the person they want to be, and they're going to fall deeper down. When we have youth who have underdeveloped resilience skills, or who have certain personality characteristics a little higher on neuroticism, and honestly a little lower on extraversion. I'm not trying to say that being extroverted is good, and being introverted is bad. Just that when it comes to things like bullying and making life changes, extraversion tends to be a boon. So when we have these individuals, they generally also have poor coping skills, and they end up with much higher rates of internalizing and externalizing difficulties as well as other school related problems. And we see this throughout childhood and adolescence even into adulthood. Sometimes, if the behavior the bullying behavior, or the victimization continues, we continue to see higher rates of internalizing and externalizing behaviors. So internalizing behaviors being kind of mood issues, mood regulation, type things, and anxiety or depression and externalizing being further aggression. So bullying has a big impact, and it can have a long run, the impacts can be long lasting our job as adults and as researchers and educators is to try to identify it try to provide children with the coping mechanisms and problem solving skills to get through these obstacles. Because bullying is a terrible thing. We don't want anyone to experience it, but we know they will. Most kids will at some point. And even honestly, to provide these skill sets to the would be bullies. Because if we can help them think about their lives and situations and their social interactions in a different way, they'll behave differently.

Joi Patterson: 27:48

Yeah, we are talking to Dr. Ali Cipro who specializes in brain science. She's a professor, she does research. And we have this wonderful opportunity to talk about bullying, which is such an important topic, who's the bully? Who's the victim? How do we as adults deal with these situations to improve them at Dr. Ali, you're like my son, you are very resilient because you experienced bullying, too. And you turned into this amazing person, and you're just a swan. Right, you know? And if they could just see me now. So you've taken you and Dr. Amy, you've taken some of that criticism, but it started in middle school, and you have become such wonderful and beautiful and dynamic people. Best way to get back at a bully, isn't it?

Amy Vujaklija: 28:42

Let's talk about adolescence. We keep dancing around this adolescence, early adolescence time period. Why is adolescence such a pivotal and critical time that allows for bullying to happen?

Alli Cipra: 28:57

I think that it goes mostly back to this time period, middle school, adolescence, this is when children are starting to figure out who they want to be who they are. So it's all about identity development at this point. And that's going to continue for a long time, obviously, but it starts around middle school because prior to middle school when we're in elementary school, and prior to that our friends are the people who are near us, whether it's at school, whether it's they live in our neighborhood, we do the things that we do, because that's what we're told to do in our family structure. When we get into middle school, we have a little more autonomy, a little more freedom. And we start thinking about who do I want to be friends with because I share certain values or characteristics or hobbies rather than Oh, this is so and so who lives next door. So we start to reevaluate who we are what we want to be part of that evaluation process is generally I want to be popular or I want to be accepted or I want to be special. And kids are sometimes misdirected in the ways to achieve those goals. And that's what can result in some of these serious interpersonal issues and bullying behaviors or even victimization. It's really the identity development and kids are experimenting, I would guess that Dr. Joy, Dr. Amy, you guys are not the same people that you were in sixth grade or eighth grade, or freshman year of high school, most people will talk about going through certain phases, you're flirting with that identity, right. And that's what kids are doing. They're playing around with different identities, trying to figure out which one works for them. And that can lead them open to either bullying others to try to assert power and dominance and a place at the higher end of the higher Middle School hierarchy. Or sometimes it can set them out as a possible victim, they're wearing all black and golf isn't cool at their school or something, then they're more likely to become a victim because of that. And again, they're just trying to figure out who they want to be.

Joi Patterson: 31:02

One thing that I did not have as a teacher in middle school was professional development on bullying, which I think is really important. I want to you to talk about kind of resiliency research, and what does that look like because I talked to schools and one of our partner schools right down the row, and they have something called Facebook Monday, and I said, What is Facebook Monday, and they said, it's all the garbage that they have to deal with on Monday, because of the weekend and all the cyber bullying that went on over the weekend. And they actually have faculty and staff that try to be online as much as possible to hear these some of these conversations going on, so that they can be ready on Monday morning to address some of these things. And it has gotten that bad where they call it Facebook Monday, as you say this is following you home was not just what happens at school is not what happens in the lunchroom, it continues at home. And most kids at an early age now are connected by social media. Let's talk about what resiliency research work looks like and what the focus is.

Alli Cipra: 32:13

So I became involved with resiliency research to try to approach some of these problems from the other end, anti bullying is the prevention part, resilience is the Okay, well it happened, let's figure out how to deal with this, basically, and there are a lot of socio emotional learning curriculums out there. And there are a lot of resilience programs out there. I think a lot of them miss some of the point. They're not taking in all of the available research and making it applicable to children. They're still kind of talking about it as though they're doing just professional development for teachers, which we're getting more of that which is good. And teachers need to know this. But they're not really bringing it down to the level that kids need to learn about it. So for resilience, some of the key factors are problem solving capabilities, and emotion centered versus problem centered coping. These are the things that I harp on when I'm in the school systems. When I'm doing professional development for teachers, or when I'm working on resilience curriculum or workshops. I always doesn't matter what they asked me for if it's resilience based, it's going to have emotion centered versus problem centered coping, and other problem solving skills. Emotion centered, if there's something that I can't change, it's a problem. It's an issue for me, and I can't change the problem, I have to think about how can I change my response to it, I have to change my emotional response to it. I can't change that mom and dad are getting a divorce. But I can change how I feel about that. And then if I change how I feel about it, I can change how I behave about it. I can't change that I failed my exam. But guess what, I can change how I feel about this. And then I can move into even problem centered coping with that one. What can I do to not fail it next time? So I always start kids off with what's the issue? Pick one thing that bothers you one thing that's a problem, or that you're worried about? And then we have to find out? Can we fix it? Can we change that problem? Can we change the outcome? If the answer's yes, we're going to start with problem centered coping. So we're going to make a plan. How do I change this and make multiple plans because your first plan isn't going to work most of the time, so then they have some agency in it and they feel like okay, I don't have to lash out and do this other thing. I can do something about what's really bothering me. And sometimes the problem centered coping, that's not going to work. You can't change the outcome. So how can I change the way I think about it and the way I feel about it? That's the emotion centered coping. That one's hard. That one's really hard. Even for adults. I do a lot of workshops on emotion centered coping for adults, actually, because it's something that you hear and you're like, Well, yeah, obviously. And then I say, okay, when have you done that? Oh, when should you have done that? Oh, Oh, I can't change this problem. But how do I respond to it? And I like to use the word respond, not react, because React is your gut, this is what I want to do. This is what you know, I feel mad, I'm going to punch a wall, right? Well, let's take a step back. And let's think of a response rather than an initial reaction. And that response can be more calculated, we can think about it, your emotions and your cognitions have to play together. And when they do, it's really kind of magical. I can change the way I feel by changing the way I think you have to tell yourself that over and over and over until you feel it.

Amy Vujaklija: 35:35

I wonder if Mum had any idea how valuable her words were when she said, Tomorrow is another day. And you have to prepare to face it, just this idea of all you have to see what tomorrow brings. I don't know that she had training in the psychology. But that was really valuable. And I think about that. Now, let's talk about what parents can do, and perhaps what they should not be doing.

Alli Cipra: 36:06

Yeah, really quickly. I think your mom was brilliant. I don't know if you guys ever read the Anna Green Gables books. But that was my older sister's favorite. And then when the mini series came out, it was her favorite. And there's something that I use to tell my daughter and my son, tomorrow's a new day with no mistakes in it yet. It's from there. And it sounds kind of silly, but it's true. Like no matter what happened today, tomorrow's a fresh start, right? We can try to change it, we can try to change the thing. Or we can try to change how we think and feel about the thing. So for parents, understanding this way to regulate emotions is really important because kids model what they see, sometimes parents have really wonderful emotional regulation skills, most of the times we don't, because you know what, I can be really great with other people's kids, but my own kids press my buttons so much, right? So they're not getting the best of me in terms of modeling behavior all the time, being more cognizant about that, thinking more about that, but also modeling it and practicing it with your kids. So I have two children, the the younger is five, and he is intense. He has pretty intense emotions, and he's speech delayed. So for a lot of times, we had a lot of really intense emotions, because he couldn't communicate well. So we started doing breathing together. And it's simple, right? But he would not do it on his own for a long time. But when he gets really worked up, I just grab them, put them in a big hug. And I say let's breathe, and we sit down. And we do big breaths together big slow breaths together. And it de escalates. It helps him calm. And then we can think about, okay, what's the problem? How can we approach this, if you're in an emotional state, you cannot think rationally. And kids are mostly emotional beings, we are teaching them to be logical and rational. And it takes a long time. So if we do it with them, not just tell them go stand in the corner until you're, you know, ready to come out? Well, maybe we say, okay, maybe you do need to be removed, maybe you need to go stand over there. But let's breathe. Let's think about it. Let's calm down, it's really important to give kids a physical task to help them calm down emotionally. And breathing tends to be a really great one, because I won't get into all the super nerdy stuff. But it does actually help bring down the arousal of the sympathetic nervous system, some so and that helps bring up the arousal of the parasympathetic. So then we're not in that fight flight or freeze mode, because that's essentially where kids live. When they're in crisis.

Joi Patterson: 38:47

That is amazing advice. We should call author a book you write what parents should do, and I'll write what parents should not do. I am the parent, like you said, when it's your child, it's emotional. And you want to react. And some parents do react very badly and trying to protect their children. But I'm that parent, the school called my daughter who was a teacher and said, the bus driver told us that your son is being bullied. My grandson didn't say a word about this. My daughter was you know, upset, but she's a lot more calm than I am. And her husband is a police officer. So they talked to him about it. He explained what was happening and why he didn't say anything. And he said, Well, we have to do something about it. And he started asking him so what should we do? So my grandson came with all these things that he could do for himself to stop the bullying. And he felt very supported. Yeah. So now every day he wants to tell us about what somebody is doing. But he felt very, very supported that hey, my parents got my back. They reacted. And I can talk to them about these things and they were willing to Be concerned, I don't have the best yield. So I really thank you for adding that piece of advice to parents because I know that they feel lost sometimes and they feel helpless. It's just crushing when you see your child hurting, and you can't do anything about it. And we know that some cases are so serious where children actually take their lives because you're being bullied. And it's such a serious thing here at Governor State University, we try to integrate some things into our curriculum, because I think that professional development and teacher preparation and counselors and psychotic school psychologists all need to be prepared when it comes to bullying. We've added a lot of competencies to our superintendent program, so that superintendents really understand this work on bullying. We've integrated SEL, and the educator programs, Amy and I both we teach middle grades development. And that's one of the things that I teach about how middle grade students behave. I even did some research, there was a psychologist, actually, they came up with sports, that middle school kids and high school kids, they should actually be involved in sports, it was a psychologist, because like you said, all these things that are going on in their mind and their body at this time, and they need to be able to do something positive with this energy. Otherwise, the results will be very bad if we don't find something else for them to do. And now we're looking forward to integrating the culturally responsive teaching and leading standards into our curriculum. So I think with the mindfulness, and our middle grades, courses, and SEL, I think we are producing better professional educators that can identify when bullying takes place that can help both the bully and the victim,

Amy Vujaklija: 41:55

I want to ask one last question, you've led into the Educator Preparation piece, I want to ask what can educators do? And what should educators not be doing?

Alli Cipra: 42:08

So let's start with what they shouldn't be doing. They shouldn't be ignoring things that they see, even if they're not quite sure, but it just seems wrong, they shouldn't be ignoring it, they should be approaching the problem. And it's not just talking to the possible victim, it's also talking to the possible bullies. If there's something going on in the classroom, they need to talk to both parties, because otherwise, it's just the whole Oh, I'm not going to tell an adult so the victim might not say anything, right. But if the bully is being approached by an educator, that can make a difference as well. So don't ignore it, approach it. But also don't join in that seems obvious, but I can tell you, I have been an observer in school districts and I have seen teachers not just ignore, but sometimes encouraged the some of the behavior that the children are engaging in, so and so is being teased and ignored. And the teacher doesn't do anything about it. I was in one school about a year before COVID. And I'm not going to use the actual nickname, because that might be noticed by people who are listening to the podcast, but a kid had had been being called a nickname that sounded kind of derogatory, but you know, I didn't know the school system. It was my first day there. And I was just doing classroom observations, the teacher started using that name, like when they would call on the students. So I thought, Well, maybe it's not what I think it is, it was the teacher was trying to be the cool teacher to reach all the other kids by basically joining in with this name calling. And that is more common than you would think. So these are things that we absolutely should not be doing as educators we should not be ignoring, and we should not be perpetuating. And I think everybody knows that. But I don't think they realize the impact their actions have what we should be doing. We should be vigilant, we should be looking for what's happening. And we can try to help the students on their identity journey. Think of one of the things I generally say is write down all the things you want to be the person you want to become. And then write down the behaviors that people like that engage in. If you want to be successful and honest and have a family like those are important things to you part of your future identity. What do you need to do about that? So honest, people aren't going to be lying all the time, making them accountable that your habits reinforce your character and a character reinforces your habits. Teachers can do this as classroom activities. Most schools require SEL once a week, this can be part of the SEL curriculum, having students actively think about these things. Just making it explicit. Kids are not good with subtlety. Be explicit in your lessons. If you do see something, obviously try to deescalate it. It's really important that just like with parents Teachers model teachers model positive skill sets. If a kid is late to class and I go off the handle and I scream at him, that's going to tell my kids, my students that verbal aggression is the response to make people listen to you and to show people that you're the boss rather than taking a different approach. Now, it doesn't mean being soft and not having consequences. But it means having consequences as a way to change behavior rather than simply a way to punish behavior. So that's what we have to think about. Are we trying to help these kids change? Are we trying to help them not be bullies anymore? Are we trying to help them overcome some of the things they're experiencing as victims? Or are we just trying to punish the bullies? Because punishing them only works as long as the punishment works? It's not going to change who they are and what they do long term.

Joi Patterson: 45:52

That is out outstanding. Excellent advice.

Amy Vujaklija: 45:55

I am so glad we had this conversation with you today. Our listeners will appreciate the strategies that you've offered to us. And I've really am interested in more research about resiliency in anti bullying, what those look like in comparison to one another. So we need to have more conversations.

Alli Cipra: 46:17

Absolutely.

Joi Patterson: 46:19

And we will link some information in the show notes when this podcast is released.

Alli Cipra: 46:24

Thank you for having me.

Joi Patterson: 46:25

Thank you very much.

Amy Vujaklija: 46:28

Thank you for listening to teaching and leading with Dr. Amy and Dr. Joy. Visit our website at govst.edu/teaching and leading podcast to see the show notes from this episode.

Joi Patterson: 46:46

We appreciate Governor State University's work behind the scenes to make publishing possible. Stay tuned for more episodes with Dr. Amy and Dr. Joy