The month of October, also known as National Bullying Prevention Month, is when the United States raises awareness about bullying and promotes strategies on how to prevent it. This event was introduced in 2006 by PACER’s National Bullying Prevention Center, to encourage individuals, schools and communities to educate others about the impact of bullying and to empower bystanders to take action. In National Bully Prevention Month, activities take place to have people support kindness, respect and inclusion.
Rolling Meadows High School’s sponsors, social workers Amy Santoro and Belen Uriostegui, are doing their best to contribute to National Bullying Prevention Month by spreading the word to students once every week of October through infographics.
“We’ve been also sending out this information to teachers, we’ve given them some activities that the teachers can do with their students to test their knowledge about how much knowledge they have about National Bullying Prevention Month,” said Santoro.
The staff members also included a tip line, a QR code to scan for anyone who has been a victim or a witness of bullying. It is included underneath every infographic that is sent out by the school. Below are the main topics that the RHMS infographics cover for National Bullying Prevention Month. The infographics are posted on Schoology and through students’ G-mail accounts.
- Bullying Prevention Week 1: Types of Bullying
- Information on the eight different types of bullying
- Explanations for all of them
- Bullying Prevention Week 2: Take Action to Prevent Bullying
- The steps to Prevention
- How to intervene during a bullying incident
- What to do afterwards
- Bullying Prevention Week 3: Responding to Bullying
- Steps to bullying prevention:
- Recognizing the signs
- Saying something
- Reporting Bullying
- Being persistent
- Bullying Prevention Week 4: How Common is Bullying?
- Bullying Statistics in Schools
- Cyberbullying Statistics
- Consequences of Bullying
- The Law
Actions do not go unnoticed in RHMS. Students all around the school take notice of what the school is doing to act as part of National Bullying Prevention Month. “The school is doing something. I’ve seen posters all around the school and even some classes are discussing it,” said senior Jennifer Diaz Flores.
It is impacting students of all ages, as they are seeing updates on school sites. “I’ve been seeing emails getting sent out through my G-Mail account and been seeing the infographics on Schoology,” said freshman Sam Johnson.
Overall, RHMS strongly encourages everyone, as a school and community, to work together to take action to prevent bullying and to spread awareness about it. According to statistics, more than 57% of bullying incidents stop when a peer intervenes. Students today still have the power to raise those percentages. Remember, “if you see something, say something!”