 In this next segment, and we don't have as much time as we'd hoped, it's a student panel discussion and it's a chance for students, including Hunter and Donovan, who both attend Timberline, and maybe I can ask Hunter and Donovan to just kick off quickly. I want to ask everybody to be brief in your comments and then we can get to everybody and perhaps have a discussion. The focus of this though is your advice from students about what we need to do next. What we need to do better? What we need to do in addition to that? What is going to be the next step to make our schools safer places for kids? So Hunter, Donovan, do you want to start? One thing that I think is really important and I think it's been brought up a few times is bullying needs to be made not cool. Like it needs to be viewed as something that's not cool, not something that people will see and smile and laugh at at all because it's not cool. And the cool people, cool that people view as being someone that they look up to, they can't be bullies. Bullies can't be viewed as being someone that other people should look up to. So I think it's really important to make sure that bullying isn't cool, isn't viewed as being cool at all. And that's why I think it's really important to get youth, especially older youth, talking to the younger kids because we're the people that they look up to. And do you do that at Timberline? Yes. Kevin? Yep. As student advocates, we went to the middle school last year that feeds into our school and we talked to all the different classrooms there. Fantastic. Thank you for that. Hunter? Like Donovan said, given the students the power to educate the younger children is huge. Especially because if a bully is doing anything, they're going to rebel and not listen to a counselor or a teacher. Whereas a student will listen to. And that's about all the thoughts everyone else has touched on it so far. Thank you for that. Who else wants to kick in on this? We've got Kieran Chima, Danielle Rogers, Angile Ann, Adam Chandani, Milo or Milo Bowman, I apologize. And Marissa Beniske. Go ahead, Adam, from Mullgrave. I think one of the big things that I believe Barbara mentioned earlier was focusing on the culture. So how do we change this? And just like she said, it starts at home. Now I don't know exactly how that can be fixed. But I think that is something that we do have to focus on and that not enough schools are focusing on. Go ahead. So I'm Angile, I'm from Air Canberra and we have a program similar to the youth facilitator program. It's called Peer Counselors. We're actually trained by the counselors of our school to deal with these problems. And we know how to look for cues and we get trained to look, you know, to respond to things like suicide and even small things like, oh, you know, I didn't do so well on a test. And we're kind of, we're the grade 12s, we're the cool kids, you know, like, and all the grade eights, you know, look up to us. And so we're assigned a list of grade eights and we get to talk to them. We get to make sure they're okay, check up on them. And that connection that we form with them really helps because if they have a problem, they can come talk to us. And we can talk to whoever is, you know, potentially bullying them because it's really hard for some kids to talk to teachers and counselors. And just that smaller age gap makes a huge difference. Thank you, Angile. Thank you, Adam. Anybody else want to go ahead? At our school, we've got a club and it's kind of the anti-bullying club of the school. And we go around and we teach all of our grades, all of our feeder schools, all the grade sevens in our feeder schools about bullying and what it means to be the bystander, what it means to be the victim and the bully and all the information they really need to make the decisions for themselves. And we also teach all of our grade fours, all the grade four classes in in our feeder schools about getting along really. And that's where it starts. It starts with everyone accepting each other and everyone getting along. And so I think that makes a big difference. And I definitely, a lot of us see a big difference coming into our school. They really have, it kind of sets up that scenario where they know they're coming into the school, into a school that is a safe school and it is not a bullying school. I think that really sets it up really well. Go ahead. So just looking at the online reporting tool and how students and parents are going to be educated on how to use the website and encourage to use it, I just started thinking about the importance of teachers in our school because we spend so much time of the day with teachers and a teacher's attitude will affect completely how a student feels about school and their emotional, like, daily life. So it also maybe think about the situation at our school and how we have posters around the school that say that's okay with the circle with the bar through it. And teachers that want to implement this put this in their classrooms. And then so if someone in the classroom will say it then the teacher will talk to the students telling them that that's not okay because it's in that so gay free zone. So if something's like that then and teachers encourage it, then I feel like it's a really important part of how students will take this as something serious. And as an actual example, my friend the other day got kicked out of the library because they said that's so gay. So it's kind of an important part is teachers' relationships and how much they are educated on what they're doing and the importance of them getting the message to parents and students. Anybody else on the official panel want to offer up something? I see Jay's got his hand just holding a sec Jay. And then I want to open it up to other students as well. Anybody else? No? Go ahead. Oh and yeah go ahead Donovan as well. Like I mentioned or I asked earlier and Teresa responded. I think if the Erase Bullying Strategy also allowed students to pass on this knowledge to other students as do a lot of other programs and as you guys spoke about the different programs at your school because being a student I think I can speak on behalf of all the other students here. We're more likely to listen to older students or fellow students than we are to listen to adults as much as you guys might not like but because we know that other students can relate to us so I think just having more student involvement can definitely promote anti-bullying. Thank you Donovan. I just wanted to talk about just for a second about cyber bullying because the thing about it is bullying has changed so much in even just three, four, five years and it's ever been because of the because of the internet and because of social networks and I think it's like it's easy the most pressing issue in our school would be the cyber bullying because it's easier to stop bullying at school because it's like a visual thing you see and people can step in easier when they're at school. It's more of a physical thing. You know you don't see as much of that stereotypical knock the binders out of the kid's hand in the hallway. It's a lot more sinister now. You can do it anonymously on social networks so I just think that's the most pressing issue when it comes to bullying is cyber bullying right now. Let me ask the panel this. Do any of you ever have any of you ever observed that an adult is afraid to intervene or is it mostly that adults just don't understand how to spot it or what to do about it? Who wants to speak to that? I think like Donovan said it's just so much more hidden now that an adult can walk by and not understand the difference between students arguing and students having a conversation and I can provide an example a personal example. Last year in my last year of high school I had some difficulties with a group of other girls and a teacher at my school walked by and just thought we were having a conversation where whereas what was really happening was that this group of girls were throwing negative comments at me so the teacher could not tell the difference between the two because it was just so much more hidden so I think the erase bullying strategy is amazing in providing teachers, counselors, liaisons and different adults at our school with the knowledge of how to recognize bullying because if you can't recognize it you can't do anything about it. Thank you Hunter I saw you lean forward. No you pass anybody else? And then we're gonna go ahead oh go ahead you haven't said anything yet from Walnut Grove right? No from Comox. Well I just wanted to touch base on like what if the teacher is causing the bullying against the student what are you supposed to do because my brother was bullied relentlessly by his fifth grade teacher because my brother has a stutter he can't sit still he's fidgeting all the time and she is really into art and she completely abolished PE after they did like a month of cross-country skiing at Mount Washington she's like oh yeah we don't need any more PE classes no she would just like single out my brother all the time because he would just like could like not sit still and he would like interrupt her when she's talking to stuff like that because they need some sort of outlet for their extra energy and she would single him out and completely humiliate him in front of all of his peers but there's nothing he could really do about it so he told my mom and she told he went she went to the teacher and addressed the situation but she completely like kind of leapt out on him and like completely like ruined his grades and ruined his grade five year is there anything students can do about that like like can we go to someone to to address this situation address what would your advice be if you could fix that I don't I would I would have like perhaps like a group of kids to go and talk to the teacher or go and talk to like another person of authority or another teacher except for like you can't really do anything if they're gonna like affect your grades be like oh you totally ratted me out I'm gonna give you a B now or a C plus there's nothing you can do about that it's an interesting I see Barbara nodding her head this is a story you've heard a few times Barbara what's your advice on that many times and one of the suggestions I give parents and educators and young people is you never confront the bully alone and if the adult is the bully you don't the line that we are often given as educators as we tell parents and students to follow the line of command go to the teacher first but I say not if they're the bully you go one beyond them I would recommend in your situation I would have said to your mom and to your brother that don't confront the bully or the bully's parents alone it tends to run in the family or it's it's accepted because the teacher is on tenure or whatever no you go above them and it is a responsibility of the administrator to make sure it's a safe and caring school and if there's a teacher that's bullying a child that teacher needs to be held accountable for their behavior and if if your parents are afraid of the retaliation and the like that's the same as on the the lateral as well as the horizontal bullying is that kids are afraid well parents are afraid your your brother's afraid so go to the adult and if that adult won't do something then you go one more and then we pretty soon have the Ministry of Education finally hopefully you'll never get there because the administrators most administrators want to have a safe and caring school know it's not going to be easy to confront that bully whether they're tenured or not but your classroom needs to be safe and if there is any retaliation the teacher is held accountable for that retaliation if but you don't go directly to the teacher we do that in conflict you never do it in bullying you resolve conflict you stop bullying and you stop it by going above them thank you barbara j you had some comments to offer um i was actually i was actually going to comments about like you know what the teachers can do and um you know about you know how some of them aren't you know aware of you know certain things and whatever what but you know we've talked a lot about like you know implementing like you know certain programs and schools about leadership and you know implementing this kind of thing in school but what i want to touch base on is that you know if we want to see this goodness you know come out we've got to take initiative in other ways and what i mean by that is that like for teachers to promote like you know goodness and goodness programs it has to extend beyond the schools and i think i think one of the things i want to do is try to encourage teachers to promote good like you know to promote goodness to you know integrate promotion of self-confidence social consciousness and the ability to address deal with and better personal imperfections i won't like i want to see you know a community and a system with people who are willing to make steps into doing that outside of like you know class norms and everything like that and i'm not speaking just on behalf of teachers i'm speaking on behalf of students and parents and everything thing like that so really what we have to do is try to create you know like um teachers and people who are willing are willing to make a change to let them know that you know their voice can be heard their voice can have an impact and that like if they follow some certain necessary steps that they can certainly make a change um but yeah that was one thing i really wanted to address and by the way i really just wanted to comment on all of the different um you know policies and programs these schools and students have been put in place i think i've just heard some absolutely astounding ideas and stuff today and i think that thank you and i really hope that that a lot of our connections will like extend beyond this meeting because i really think that there are some absolutely brilliant policies and brilliant ideas being thrown around and and if we and if we can contact each other like outside and you know you know share like share our own policies and our own thoughts and things then we could really you know integrate this community like everywhere like we can spread like we can spread it far and wide and extend it far beyond our own you know personal little like you know solitary communities like i mean i live in the comox valley or whatever like but we can extend it beyond that and there's one example i want to give this was something that i actually didn't get to touch on today but um just last year my co like my home in the comox valley had um went through a great deal of hardships there were there is at this one festival my one friend james was actually like accidentally stabbed and like he ended up dying from his wounds like he was murdered and after that there were a number of teen suicides that happened including like one of one of my good new friends i was making at my new school and a bunch of my other friends his friends too and so what me and the community did and it wasn't just me it was a meal over here was actually involved in this project with me too is that we um we set it we set out to make a difference and what we did was um we heard about like the poet shane coys and just performing it like um our uh sit williams the theater and then we approached him about you know making a video that would extend beyond our community to help other people in need and by doing that we made something really astounding like this video that that me and milo and so many other people in our community were a part of is now extending beyond other people in fact like that really film festival thing um our film was entered into that and those people ended up loving it and they actually screened it at the vancouver international film festival last month and so like i think the point i'm trying to make is that i want to be able to see people who are willing to like extend beyond and make that and make those kind of contributions not just to their own community but to also be willing to reach on to other people because now that like a simple community thing that you know me and a group of people ended up doing has now extended so far beyond it's being shown in places all over the world it's been screened at film festivals and everything like that and i think that everybody has the power to um you know make those kind of difference if they're willing to take the initiative