LPS unveils bullying prevention toolkits for students, teachers

October 29, 2024

Lincoln Public Schools educators will have a brand-new box of tools to use this year to teach bullying prevention and response lessons across the city.
 
LPS is enhancing its decades-long effort against bullying with a comprehensive set of materials for students, teachers and family members. Members of the Student Services Department have compiled a wide array of resources into toolkits geared for elementary and secondary levels. They developed the toolkits in coordination with the school district’s new PAR (Prevention, Accountability, Restorative) behavior framework.
 
Karmin Pedroza and Lori Hemmett designed the blueprint for the districtwide anti-bullying lessons. Pedroza is a supervisor within Student Services and Hemmett is the school counseling supervisor at LPS. They said the project’s main goal was to increase awareness about the many school and community resources that LPS uses each year.
 
“We’ve always had our bullying prevention lessons,” Pedroza said. “They’ve been a part of our health curriculum and we’ve had some additional resources available, but with our new strategic plan and our emphasis and focus on student wellbeing and staff wellbeing, it definitely made sense that we were bringing it back to the surface on what we do to support everyone.”
 
“What’s new this year is that we have put together a very specific campaign for our principals and our teachers to use,” Hemmett said. “We have resources that they either post digitally in their Google classrooms or their physical classroom space and messaging that is standardized for all principals to send home in either their weekly or monthly messages. It’s so parents see that we have a concerted effort to educate all of our students on the importance of reporting and being a good upstander.”

 
LPS teaches bullying prevention units to all students in preschool through seventh grade through its Social Emotional Learning curriculum, and there are multiple lessons in secondary classes such as career and technical education, family and consumer sciences, health and business. The school district has also conducted bullying prevention lessons for all staff for many years.
 
Pedroza and Hemmett began the project by contacting school counselors at every building. They wanted to compile a full database of bullying prevention materials that were already being used.
 
Pedroza said they were thrilled to catalog the large number of instances where local schools were mentioning the subject. For example, the 2024-25 handbook for Maxey Elementary School features two full pages of bullying prevention information. It includes the definitions of bullying, LPS Policy 5482 about the school district’s anti-bullying efforts and Maxey’s plan for preventing and responding to bullying behaviors and incidents.
 
“For us to say here’s an additional toolkit only strengthens what we’re doing,” Pedroza said. “We’re really pleased with what we’ve already seen. We’ve got buildings doing great work on a daily basis, so this just enhances what they have available to them.”

 
The elementary and secondary toolkits both include lessons about the difference between being a bystander and an upstander. Bystanders see bullying happening but do not do anything to stop it, while upstanders do their best to support and protect others around them.
 
“The efforts and resources and strategies that we’re engaging in are that we want to have solid relationships built with students so they feel comfortable reporting those things when they are happening,” Pedroza said. “We are creating that community that you know you can come to a trusted adult if you see those things happening or you’re experiencing those things.”
 
The toolkits also include multiple lessons and resources about cyberbullying, which can take place through texting, online games and social media. Hemmett said it is essential for students to know what to do when they are the victim of cyberbullying or see it affecting their classmates.
 
“It’s so important to help students realize that when they do see that happening, they have to report it, because those spaces are so hard for us to monitor,” Hemmett said. “A lot of that happens outside the school day, but it impacts how students are able to learn well and feel safe in the school day.”

 
LPS is unveiling the toolkits in conjunction with its new PAR behavior framework. District leaders spent 18 months developing PAR materials, which are designed to address all types of behavior in schools.
 
The 154-page guidebook includes links to prosocial lessons that are being taught in all grades and a list of reasons why certain behaviors might happen. It also provides restorative practices that can help repair relationships, create more empathy and encourage both accountability and responsibility.
 
“We truly can’t have teaching and learning happening unless we have a true understanding of behavior and how we can prevent and respond to it,” Pedroza said. “I’m really proud of the work LPS is doing so that we can have a balanced approach to having robust teaching and learning happening and having robust support on the prevention side of behavior and the response side of behavior.”
 
Hemmett said LPS wants to help everyone learn that it is never okay to be unkind to someone. She said the school district is focused on sharing that important message every day of the year.
 
“The real root of what bullying prevention is, is to create an environment of empathy,” Hemmett said. “You wouldn’t want to feel that way either, so why would you want to make someone feel that way?”

To learn more about our Student Services department and its resources, visit our website at https://home.lps.org/studentservices/. 

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