Shedding Light On Bullies

By Eliza Hallabeck

Reed Intermediate School Assistant Principal Anthony Salvatore visited another school in the district Wednesday, November 12, to give a presentation on bullies.

“This is a topic near and dear to my heart,” said Dr Salvatore as he began his presentation at Hawley Elementary school for a PTA-hosted night called Parents Against Being Mean.

Parents, students, PTA members, and Dr Salvatore met in the gym of the school, and Dr Salvatore said the first things he wanted to hear from the audience before he started his presentation was what their concerns were about bullying. “How do you avoid bullies?”

“Why do they do it?” a girl in the audience asked.

Dr Salvatore said the State of Connecticut is trying to redefine the definition of bullying. He said the state is now really defining bullying as meanness. Anyone can make bad decisions, said Dr Salvatore, and there are three types of people that come out of bullying: the bully, the victim, and the bystander.

Different types of parenting can lead to a child becoming one of the three, according to Dr Salvatore.

“That’s the hard part as an adult,” said Dr Salvatore, “and as a parent. Because we don’t like to be one of those parents.”

In 1966 William Glasser developed a theory that he eventually expanded to work for school districts also, and Dr Salvatore said the Newtown Public School System uses it as its success-oriented school model. In Glasser’s Choice Theory there are four main basic human needs: love, power, freedom, and fun.

“The key here is maintain some kind of equilibrium,” said Dr Salvatore. Anybody can be a bully, Dr Salvatore said.

“People bully because it gets them what they want,” said Dr Salvatore.

As an activity for the night Dr Salvatore asked everyone in the room to form groups of four. The group had to stand in a square and hold on to one another, each person was asked to be a wheel on a car. The members of the groups were assigned one of the four basic human needs, and one by one Dr Salvatore asked them to try to walk around the gym and drive their car.

For the person in the front of the vehicle this was not a challenge, because they were in charge. For the people in the back it was a bit more difficult.

After the activity Dr Salvatore used the school shooting that happened at Columbine High School in Colorado as an example of a wake-up call for the country, and he said the country had a choose to learn from it or not.

“There are popular kids who are good and who make good choices,” he said, but there are also popular students who can make destructive decisions as an example.

In every group of students Dr Salvatore said about 35 percent are popular, 10 percent are “wannabes,” 50 percent are in cliques that are based on mutual interests and about 10 percent are loners.

Dr Salvatore said bullies feel very high self-esteem, victims are not always weak, and bullying is one-sided.

“The interesting thing is,” said Dr Salvatore, “it is the student themselves who can stop a bully.”

Generally, victims tend to have overprotective parents, he said, and it is the parents’ job to equip their children with the traits necessary to combat bullying.

After discussing the different types of bullying, Dr Salvatore ended the night’s presentation by reminding everyone present that a community conversation will be started in January and all are welcome to get involved. To read more about the community conversation see the article “Community Conversation Grant To Create Conversation On Bullying” in this section.