How We Work to Change Culture
Research shows that the most effective bullying prevention efforts involve students, parents, teachers, and community members. Community-wide engagement demonstrates to students that adults care what happens to them and that they are not alone. Pasco County Agents for Change works collaboratively with families, schools, and community partners like Anytown and Pasco Pride to improve reporting, implement solutions and create a broader culture of caring support for all youth in Pasco County.
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School-based bullying prevention programs decrease bullying by up to 25% (McCallion & Feder, 2013). Additionally, students reported that the most helpful things teachers can do are: listen to the student, check in with them afterwards to see if the bullying stopped, and give the student advice (Davis & Nixon, 2010). Furthermore, involving law enforcement officials, faith organizations, community action groups, and other visible members of the community helps school officials and parents to address the bigger issues of disrespect, bias, and violence that can contribute to bullying issues in schools (StopBullying.gov, 2016; Swearer, Wang, Collins, Strawhun, & Fluke, 2014 )
Freethought Fellowship
Hosted By: Spirit of Life Unitarian Universalists
Who is Pasco Agents For Change and what progress have we made in the past 2 years to help the youth in our community? We also talk about our plans to expand our reach and increase our impact in the Tampa Bay area.
According to the Center for Disease Control , promising elements of bullying prevention programs include:
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Multi-tiered systems of support, including universal programs or activities for all youth within the community or school; selective interventions for youth at risk of being bullied ; and preventive interventions for youth already involved in bullying.
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Multicomponent programs that address multiple aspects of bullying behavior and the environments that support it
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School-wide prevention activities to help improve the school climate, overall, strengthened supervision of students, and a visible school-wide anti-bullying policy.
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Involving families and communities to help everyone learn how to talk about bullying and be part of school-based prevention efforts.
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Developing long-term school-wide approaches that develop youth social-emotional, communication, and problem-solving skills.
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Focusing on program fidelity by forming an implementation team to make sure the programs are carried out exactly as they were designed.