The cast of “STAND UP! Change Teen Statistics” performs a skit dealing with current teen issues like prejudice, peer pressure, physical violence and bulllying. STAND UP!, which performed Friday, May 13, 2011 at West Aurora High School, is part of R.Ed.I., which stands for Reach, Educate, Inspire, an Arts & Education Foundation. | Marianne Mather~Sun-Times Media

AURORA — One in four teenagers will be involved, either as the victims or perpetrators, in a hate crime.

Half of teens will try an illegal drug.

Suicide is the third leading cause of death for teenagers.

And those are some of the statistics that the R.Ed.I. Foundation was trying to combat Friday morning at West Aurora High School.

“Anybody who works with kids is trying to find ways they can really reach them,” said Kim Farah, executive director and founder of R.Ed.I. “Society is getting more complicated. Their problems are getting more complicated, and we need to be as creative as possible to reach them.”

That’s the philosophy behind the show “Stand Up! Change Teen Statistics,” which Farah called “professional prevention theater.”

The hour-long show features a cast of actors ages 16 to 25 in a range of situations, from a drunken hook-up at a party, to bullying a severely depressed student in the cafeteria, to witnessing a fight between parents get violent.

While the sketches may sound like the material of after-school specials, West Aurora students in the audience said it was the way the message was delivered that connected to them.

“Some of it is a little overdone, but as far as things that really go on in high school, they’re touching on things that really happen,” said Kehlay Dunah, a senior.

“They’re being really real, not even covering up swear words. They’re acting like high schoolers actually act.”

And that was by design. According to Farah, Stand Up! was developed over five years after interviews with more than 90 teenagers talking about the real situations they face.

Which is why senior Marcus Waller said the two most noteworthy statistics for him were those on suicide and drugs.

“We experienced a suicide in our school and we all know kids who do drugs and alcohol,” said Waller.

The show was presented as part of West Aurora’s Senior Day, which gave the performance, both for the audience and the performers a different feel.

“It’s usually geared toward younger teenagers, freshmen, the ones just entering high school,” said Kurt Popper, a performer with R.Ed.I. “But you could really feel that they were involved.”

Perhaps that’s because, as this year’s seniors leave, they’re already trying to pass those same kinds of positive messages down to the juniors who will follow them. Among the audience were bruised and bloodied students who had just performed a drinking and driving simulation, complete with helicopter evacuation, the day before juniors headed to their first prom.

At Glenview Middle School in East Moline, one tool I s students wearing pink T-shirts once a month.
At Rock Island High School, musical theater was used.
In Springfield, new laws and task force reports are the weapons of choice.

The target of these disparate efforts: the age-old school yard bully.

Officials at Illinois Quad-Cities schools say bullying remains a problem, though how much of one is difficult to pin down.

Kay Ingham,Rock Island-Milan School District assistant superintendent for pupil services, said less than one percent of discplinaryreferrals at the high school are for bullying/harassment.About 3 percent of the referrals in the middle school and about 7 percent at the K-6 level are for bullying/harassment, she said.

She declined to provide the numbers behind the percentages.

Michael Hughes has hard numbers. The principal at George O. Barr school in Silvis said in the last school year 16 instances of bullying resulted in some discipline. He said discipline ranges from a lunch detention to a loss of recesses, up to in-school suspension.

Moline School District assistant superintendent for pupil/personnel services Diann Richardson said the number of bullying instances in the district was not readily available since principals, who handle it at the school level, are out for the summer.

“We do see some (bullying) and we do take appropriate steps with it,” she said.

Glenview Middle School principal Jeff Fairweather said bullying is something seen a few times a year at the East Moline School District junior high, but he didn’t have a specific number.

United Township High School principal Carl Johnson said anytime there’s a large group of kids together, you will encounter bullying.

“Bullying exists in every school. It’s a matter of how it’s handled,” he said.

He didn’t know offhand how many instances of bullying happen at the East Moline high school.

At Rock Island-Milan schools,Ms. Ingham said, discipline for bullying behavior can range from a parent conference to the most extreme form of discipline — expulsion.

Ms. Ingham said bullying can be difficult to detect, and it’s not something that can be solved within just one meeting. She said eliminating it involves teaching students new behavior.

“It’s difficult. It’s not a neat package,” she said.

Elementary counselor Melisa Breheny said the district brought in anti-bullying consultant Michael Carpenter to work with employees, as well as the musical theater production “STAND UP! Change Teen Statistics” for high school and 8th-grade students earlier this year.

The show address many teen issues, including bullying and Internet abuse (“sexting” and cyberbullying), according to its website, www.redifoundation.org/info/stand-up-2.

Ms. Ingham said school board members will be presented with a one-page supplement to the discipline code on bullying over summer break. She said the paper will focus on how the district defines bullying and what parents can do if it happens to their child, and be passed out at registration.

At Tuesday night’s school board meeting, board members voted to purchase $20,407.90 in materialsdesigned to promote a safe school climate. They’ll be used inthe elementary buildings, junior highs, and at Thurgood Marshall Center.

Mr. Fairweather,Glenview Middle School principal, said getting people to talk about bullying can be hard.

“The biggest challenge is people not talking about it, telling us,” he said, noting in order for the school to help, officials have to know it’s happening. “That’s where the bully gets their power — if they don’t tell.”

He said since Glenview’s Stand Up to Bullying program began he thinks more students have reported bullying problems and more kids have stood up for each other.

“We’ve really seen an improvement,” he said.

Glenview counselor Gaye Dunn said the program is something she had read about that she thought would be good for the school, to “make a bigger push to make kids aware of what is bullying.”

Everyone got a pink T-shirt that says “Stand Up.” She said pink was chose because there was a well-publicized case of boy being bullied for wearing pink. Ms. Dunn said once a month everyone would wear them.

She said Glenview also had a monthly activity, such as signing an anti-bullying pledge or dancing at lunch. There were regular lessons relating to bullying or respect.

Ms. Dunn said the program certainly made students more conscious about bullying, and that they were excited to participate, which was great to see.

“We want them to stand up for someone else,” she said.

Mr. Hughes said each year George O. Barr Elementaryteachers and staff are updated on bullying policies and state requirements, and they talk about how to address it, such as the importance of stepping in if you see it happening.

Mr. Hughes said bullying can be challenging when parents aren’t supportive, and when kids are being encouraged to stand up for themselves as an aggressor.

“In some cases, the kids are being taught to be physically aggressive,” instead of how to find alternative solutions, he said.

Ms. Richardson, with theMoline School District,said discipline for bullying behavior can start with a conversation and redirection, and go up to an out-of-school suspension.

Ms. Richardson said counselors at elementary levels work with kids on bullying prevention.

She said one big challenge with bullying is the definition of it, because what laws and policies consider bullying can be much different from what parents and students think about bullying.

“Sometimes they just see it as a single occurrence instead of an ongoing occurrence,” she said. A single occurrence could certainly be inappropriate behavior, she said, but not bullying.

Mr. Johnson said discpline for bullying at United Township High Schoolcan vary from a meeting,which would include a verbal warning, to an out-of-school suspension.

Mr. Johnson said one difficult part is getting all sides of the story when a report is made, because sometimes what’s reported as bullying will end up being a situation where “it’s a two-way street” where both parties involved are contributing to the problem.

He noted cyberbullying can be difficult to stop, since it generally happens outside of school.If parents carefully monitored Facebook, he said he thinks kids would probably behave differently.

He said a committee of staff members are meeting this summer to discuss a new anti-bullying policy, and looking into “what we can do better.” The policy will be presented to the school board by Mr. Johnson in the fall. He said he’s hoping to include more preventative elements.

As schools work out anti-bullying strategies, state officials are trying to assist.

The Illinois Prevent School Violence Act, signed into law in June 2010 by Gov. Pat Quinn, created among other things the Illinois School Bullying Prevention Task Force. The Task Force issued a report on March 1 on its findings on bullying and recommendations for preventing and addressing bullying in Illinois schools.

Among the recommendations by the Task Force for governmental agencies were: implementing regulations to require more detail in mandated anti-bullying policies, adding a school safety indicator/measure on the Illinois Interactive Report Card, and developing two to four common indicators that address bullying and school violence and require all schools and districts to report annually.

In addition to creating the Task Force, the Illinois Prevent School Violence Act also amended Illinois’ bullying prevention law to broadly define bullying and to require various additions anti-bullying policies.