 As a dad, I always worry about bullying too, and I do have two young daughters like Chris said. I have a nine-year-old who's in grade four, and I have a three-year-old who thinks she's seven. But the thing that scares me is always, bullying's been around for a long time. It was there when my grandparents went to school. It was there when I went to school. You know, I played rugby, like yourself. I was bullied. You know, I was a rugby player when I was in grade 10, and I always remember that. And it's funny, because many of us, and I've said this before in other forums, you think back, and who is your grade three teacher? And it might be difficult for some of the older people in the room to remember. But if you ask someone, who is the name of the bully who picked on you when you were in high school or junior high? Chances are that name comes to the forefront really, really quickly. And it just reminds myself of just how much bullying can hurt individuals. And as a parent and as a teacher, I don't want to have a society where we don't support individuals who are being bullied. We don't have a society where people who are bullying don't have the opportunity to get help. But actually I want to talk to Premier Clark. I'm really impressed that you have taken on such a huge role on this task. It is gargantuan. You're a parent, you get it. And I'm so pleased as Minister of Education today to help. And it's such a good day to be here. So now under my speaking notes where I won't freelance. Now in June, our government introduced the Erase Bullying Strategy. It's a comprehensive 10-point strategy that we're rolling out across the province. And for the first time, we'll have consistent policies and practices across all 60 school districts, from Atlan-British Columbia to Myriding and Comox Valley. They're backed by strong community partnerships to help prevent, identify, and stop harmful behavior. British Columbia is seen as a leader in North America for the strategy we're putting in place. But we can't be complacent. We need to continue to look at what we've done, where we're going, and what we need to do next. We want to provide everyone with an update of where we are at, which will help us inform our discussions later today on the next steps and our future priorities. I'm joined by Theresa Campbell today, who will speak of the multi-year multi-phase training program. And I've had the pleasure to see your work. And you are phenomenal. I am very, very impressed with what I've had a chance to see. We will also have a couple of short videos to present. One is on the new website, an online reporting tool, and one is on the multi-year training program. So to start, I'm pleased to report that the safe school coordinators are now in place in all 60 school districts. Well done, trainers. These individuals are usually senior management, but not always. And these are individuals who will be the front line in making sure that the anti-bullying strategy is working. I've also signed a ministerial order that requires school boards to devote one professional development day to anti-bullying. We've also started discussions with post-secondary institutions about incorporating our anti-bullying and threat assessment training into their teaching programs. I graduated from UBC in the teaching program 20 years ago. Cyberspace, I don't think, really existed 20 years ago. So it's really important that universities and teachers make sure they have that contact and understanding about the importance of understanding the dangers and threats that cyberbullying has. And work is also underway to develop stronger codes of contact for schools. They will include stronger language to combat discrimination on the basis of sex or sexual orientation, among other factors such as race or gender. We're also in the process of developing formal community protocols and clear provincial guidelines for threat assessments. The provincial guidelines will help ensure all 60 school districts provide a consistent response to threats and harmful behaviors. And the formal community protocols will help build stronger working relationships between schools and a broad range of community partners. So we are developing clear guidelines on how to respond to harmful behaviors and clear expectations on how we must all work together to combat bullying. And to help ensure that schools, police, and I see there are police officers in the room. Thank you very much for attending. And community partners work closely together. We are in the process of forming a Provincial Advisory Committee. This committee will be formed in the coming weeks and will bring together senior leaders from police, children protection and mental health, education and other family and family, child and family serving agencies. I'm also pleased to report starting today our new Erase Bullying website and online reporting tool is now live. The website provides vital information and tips to parents and students on the different types of bullying, the warning signs and how we can prevent it. It also serves as a portal connecting parents and students to broad range of local programs, organizations, and additional information. The website also hosts a secure confidential report bullying tool. It allows students to anonymously report bullying from a computer or smartphone when and where they want. The reports made by the students will go to the school district's safe school coordinators who will decide on the best course of action for each incident. Only the safe school coordinators will have access to the information provided and the student will only be contacted if they choose to provide their name and want to be contacted. The coordinators will choose the best approach based on the nature of the threat or incident. They may alert school principals or reach out to police or other community partners as warranted by the information provided. With a centralized view, the coordinators can now identify trends, monitor hotspots and use the data to help focus prevention intervention strategies where they are needed the most. In the coming days, we'll be following up with training for our safe school coordinators to ensure there is consistent understanding as to how to use the application and respond to the incident reports. We welcome your feedback and suggestions on both the website and the reporting tool. We also need everyone's help. This is really important to spread the word. We need to get the message out there that this is a tool that is available to help students take a stand against bullying and other safety concerns. Now the last component I want to speak up today is our multi-year multi-level training program. This is a cornerstone to our strategy. The training is in full swing and over the next five years some 15,000 educators and community partners will receive threat assessment training. I had an opportunity to take in some of the training last week in Prince George and I was very impressed. As a teacher, I found the materials incredibly practical and the examples very relevant. I also appreciated the opportunity to interact and take the training with other community partners such as the police and child protection workers. Putting faces to names and getting to know our community partners as individuals will make such a difference in coordinating our efforts. The whole room was engaged and they were there for two and a half to three days. That's a real testament to Theresa Campbell who not only developed the materials but is also doing a fantastic job of delivering the training. It's a great pleasure to be here having worked in education for well over 20 years. I do feel strongly that the Erase Initiative is going to make the biggest difference in improving our climate and cultures in our school. The five-year strategy, you saw a video caption of what we referred to as violence threat risk assessment which was some work that was already underway in some regions in the province. However, with the Erase Initiative, formalizing those relationships with our partners like MCFD, mental health and our primary prevention partners, law enforcement, makes such a significant difference in relationship to us providing appropriate assessments, therefore allowing for the right intervention at the right time for young people engaging in threat making behavior. I think it's important to talk in addition to the five-year strategy, the work that was done prior to the development of the training materials. I think it's important to talk about the exhaustive work that we engaged with various ministerial social serving ministry partners which was very important. But I absolutely loved and adored my time with the student stakeholders in the province of British Columbia. It was fascinating, it was an opportunity for me, somebody who's worked in the field of safe schools, an opportunity to recalibrate if you will and talk about the impact that social media is now having and affecting the overall feeling of safety for our students. When we talked to them in addition to the violence threat risk assessment training and just to clarify, I've got a very short period of time and I'm used to having days so you can imagine how difficult this is for me. Just quickly, I just want to encapsulate for folks, the five-year strategy includes four levels of training. Level one is what we refer to as preventing bullying and ensuring safe and caring school communities. And that is a one-day training that is being offered this year to our elementary school teams. Level two is basic threat and risk assessment. And that is being offered this year to our secondary school teams and all of our multidisciplinary partners. So as you heard from Don and the various individuals interviewed, we don't deliver that training without our partners in the room so that we are all getting on the same page when it comes to providing intervention for young people. Level three will be rolled out next year and that will be offered to our school communities in the field of advanced threat and risk assessment. So coordinating and sharing best practice in relationship to the overall intervention strategies with our community partners. And level four that will be rolled out in 2014 is essentially a train the trainer of the work that's happening now. My colleague Kevin Cameron and I were not interested in being trainers for the rest of our careers. This is all about building capacity and sustainability in the province of British Columbia. And there's many people in your own regions that are better messengers and trainers than us. So we're really excited that the province did build in the capacity for that train the trainer. When we met with our student stakeholders, we talked a lot about bullying because that is what brought us to the table. And I have to tell you, it was fascinating because the kids all identified. They said, you know what Miss Campbell, that is the most overused term in our school buildings. And if we really want to talk about making a difference around us feeling safe in our schools, there's a whole bunch of things we have to talk about. And I'm not a big wordle person, but at the end of all the students, stakeholders, I had to sit down and grasp all of the feedback that they had provided. And this was the wordle that I came up with. So there was multiple issues they talked about. But ultimately, if they talked about improving feelings of safety and cultures in their school, it really came down to issues around relationships, connectedness, definitely identifying bullying behaviors. But they talked about the roles of adults in the building and their experiences and that some kids were able to talk about their safest schools once we were able to elaborate. They came to a place where they basically were identifying for us basically a school that essentially reflected overall sense of connectedness. Meaning that students that weren't feeling connected could reach out to a staff member, could reach out to a staff member or an adult in the building and say, you know what, I don't feel safe in this particular area of the school or this individual makes me feel unsafe. And the kids themselves were able to break it down a little bit more in detail in relationship to discussing and it's hard to see on this visual. But ultimately in the end, we came up with an idea that the one-day training around preventing bullying and ensuring safe schools really needs to be around those school teams leaving the training, going back to their schools and talking with their school teams and their parents and other partners around what is our existing connectedness strategy within our school. It was fascinating talking to the adults as well when they would start to describe all the wonderful things in place in their school. And yet when I talked to the students, they weren't aware of those things that were in place. So how do we get our school teams to look at the behaviors within their school building through the lens of their students? And so you can imagine that is the overall structure for the one-day preventing bullying. In addition to that, we talked about a lot of kids felt disconnected from the adults in their building. I found this rather sad actually for somebody that has worked in the field of education for many, many years. Many kids talked about being more connected to the physical space than the adults in the building. So we are sharing with folks across the province some of those common student concerns that we are hearing from kids. Kids talked about the fact, you know, no one other than maybe a satisfaction survey, no one's ever walked up to me and asked me how I felt, what my overall feelings of safety were in the school building. Or if anyone, I ask the question, are the kids currently that make you feel unsafe in the school? And every single student in every single room said yes. And they also said Ms. Campbell, no one's ever asked us that face to face. So we talk a lot about the reality, let's get back to understanding. And people make fun of me of all my one-liners. But the reality is if we're going to talk about the role of schools in relationship to this very, very, very difficult battle, if you will, in addressing bullying and other related behaviors, we have to identify, as per the role of our school, school staff are still the best app. We keep wanting to look for the silver bullet and I have to tell you, every time I walk into a room and when I leave, people say, oh, I thought you were just going to walk in here and deliver some bully prevention program. No, this is about what is the connectedness strategy for our school? What is the connectedness strategy for your community? How are you connecting with your parents and how is that overall connectedness felt by those individuals? So I talk about the other adage of adults must be aware enough to care. Are we noticing those kids in our school hallways as Jay alluded to, as he was sitting there not connected and not being able to connect with other individuals? What is our role as adults being able to increase that overall sense of connectedness for individuals? Kids also talked a lot about things that were happening in their school building. So we also have to open up the dialogue around the overall impact of things that might be occurring in a relationship to the physical environment of the school where kids were identifying these things make me feel unsafe. In some schools, some kids identified certain stairwells that were being owned by different grade levels and that there was colors associated to various stairwells, which also meant different behaviors were associated. Interesting to hear that from the students and then sitting down with district staff and just say, really, we weren't even aware that was happening. Or one student referred to a specific hallway called the Hallway of Death and no one ever asking students, why is it called Hallway of Death? So all of these pieces that we have to be aware of and ask more questions as to what it looks like. Policy to action, this is a very old resource guide that came on the heels of the Safe Schools Task Force that I thought was also a fantastic initiative. The difference was there was great work done and the MLAs at the time were very passionate about the work and I had the opportunity to work with them at the time. But this document here is actually a fantastic document. Safe Caring and Orderly Schools Guide was introduced, I believe, in 2004. You know, I was going through it, reminded of amazing work that was done in this province, but it never translated to action in the schools. So in the preventing bullying and safe schools training, one of the things that we're doing is saying, folks, what do you know about this? Because this is where the language is in relationship to the interministerial order around our codes of conduct. And codes of conduct are important. Research is very clear. If our kids don't understand around behavioral expectations and appropriate disciplinary responses for those behaviors, that is going to affect the climate and culture of your school. And every single training that I've been to yet this year, there hasn't been a single district or school community that has been able to say that they can look at those codes of conduct and feel confident that they have been implemented the way they were made to implement. And more importantly, I also ask a second question. So we have the codes of conduct. Can I walk into your school building right now and can your students talk to me about what those codes of conduct are? How are we educating our kids around what those behaviors look like that are attached? It's beyond just posting up our codes of conduct in the school hallway and our websites. So that too has been just such a rewarding experience to be in these communities where they're going, we're getting back to the school and we're engaging our codes of conduct and we're revisiting that. And how are you using it as an educational tool? And also engaging individuals, these days are not just about me standing up talking as quickly as I am right now because I don't have much time. These days are about also around some really fascinating tabletop discussions. So how are you actually educating around your codes of conduct and expectations around behaviors in your school building? And I've heard some wonderful stories. In elementary schools, intermediate schools are now making i-movies and then presenting them to primary students. Fantastic. You take that into the next training, people are saying, that's fantastic. We're going to do that at our school. So that sharing of practice. The other key issue that was raised as well throughout all of the consultations is folks' issues around diversity are alive and well in our schools and they are affecting the climate of culture and safety in our schools. So guess what? We do have to talk about homophobia. We do have to talk about racism. We do have to talk about systemic racism. And it's interesting because my line basically to folks is folks, it's time to get comfortable talking about the things that we've been uncomfortable talking about. The kids are all saying, yeah, it exists in our school. And then you talk to the educators, no, that's not happening in our building. Yes, it is. And this is part of our day in talking about the strategies that we're going to address in identifying these behaviors because they are alive and well. So we talk about the ability to basically design for that difference because there isn't one school that is not related to or dealing with the impact of all of these behaviors. Bullying, complex subject, but I have to tell you, very concerning as well through our work is I kind of assumed that everybody out in our schools kind of understood that there's different types of bullying. And actually I was going to kind of gloss over that in the training and people said, actually, no, we actually aren't aware. And so what that meant is this is really what we've identified that there has been a blatant underreaction to behaviors in our schools because everything is being lumped into bullying. I looked at a case last week involving elementary age students, maybe it was two weeks ago, where I could identify in a 24-hour period how a situation evolved and included everything you see before you. Started off with individuals' name calling, an elementary age student, grade six or seven student. Then a number of students surrounded that young boy. Now everybody was engaged. It basically evolved to that relational, emotional piece, name calling. And then actually it went beyond that. It went to a place where a young man's head was being bashed into a wall outside of the school. And the response by the school community was, it's just bullying. BS, I'm sorry to be the harsh person here with the words, but this stuff angers me. The reality is there was instance of verbal bullying. There was instance of relational and emotional. Then we had the physical. And by the way, the physical bullying that everybody was responding to was bullying. It's assault, folks. It's a criminal code of fence. And the fact that everybody was lumping it in, if you will, to, it's just bullying, meant that there was a total underreaction by that school community to the incident. And then we got into the boys will be bullet boys thing. So we have a lot of work to do, and it is about talking about what, a lot of things that people don't want to talk about. Cyber bullying. For an individual, and also as I stand here, my passion also comes as a parent of a grade seven girl. I'm watching the evolution and we're very fortunate to have Merlin here from today. The evolution, the impact of social media and behaviors within our school buildings is like unlike anything we've ever seen before, but we've got to be on top of it. We've got to understand it. We have to, a lot of cases when people are using the term cyber bullying, when you've been exposed to multiple incidents of suicide and other high profile behaviors that I have been, not just in this province but across this country and internationally. Cyber bullying in 2009 for me, I said, you know what? Cyber bullying is soft language. The stuff that's really going on, I started referring to it as social assassination. Because imagine all the work we've done with young girls around self-image and everything else that we've dealt with over the years. And now when you take a look at, I almost was, I was getting a sense in 2009 when people were referring to ads, just cyber bullying. No folks. The reality is I started using the term referring to social assassination because the role of social media and the impact of what that has on a young person's life and identity is very, very significant. So we have to be more mindful and start calling these behaviors what they are. The way kids are receiving threats today are, we have to stay on top of, you know, Statagram, Instagram, Tumblr, it goes on. Facebook is kind of old school today. Most parents aren't even aware of things like text plus, Instagram, Statagram. Kids now were seeing more direct threats, which by the way, this Statagram was referred to as a bullying case. It went on. It's saying, well, please end your life now. But it also said, I'm going to effing kill you. Is that bullying behavior? Is that direct threat making behavior? That's a direct threat making behavior, which by the way is also a criminal code offense. So that is how this training is so beneficial and how it links, if you will, to the field of advanced threat risk assessment. We do spend time with schools talking about what we know around individuals who bully and understanding that there's various risk factors as identified earlier by both Buffy and Jay. As schools, we have to understand the motivation behind some of that behavior because that's our best possible opportunity to provide the best intervention for that individual as well. We talk about understanding, making sure school teams understand the effects of bullying behavior in all of those key pieces. And we also talk about what good assessments and intervention strategies look like in school communities. I know one of the things that I want you to understand is this is not about a training. This manual, as you'll see, is very thick. And the reason it's very thick is it was also our goal to provide as many resources so that it goes beyond the training day. Beyond the training day with Kevin or I or any of our other trainings, there's multiple resources that are also included as part of the evolution of the array strategy. Instant flow charts, checklists, things to help guide professionals when they're dealing with incidents of bullying. When do we call police? When do we notify parents? All of those key pieces. But the other key piece fits so lovely to what you're going to be hearing after the break from Barbara Calarosa. Kids were very clear. When we talked about bullying prevention and bullying intervention, they were very clear. They said if there's one particular thing that we need in every single school, it needs to be language around being a helpful bystander, not a hurtful bystander. And having worked with and been aware of Barbara's work, I understood that and those roles in Barbara's language is a little bit different. But for BC students, they were able to break it down saying, we're not talking about this. So what does that look like? How am I being a hurtful bystander? And this is going to have a significant impact when we talk about the impact of the role on social media because it's the outside behaviors. We're in fact, it's outside our school buildings as well where they're engaging in hurtful behaviors. So take you out of bullying. This was a campaign and a message that was basically developed by those students' stakeholders. This is a message from our BC students talking about be a helpful bystander, not a hurtful one. So within the training guides, we also give some background and lesson guides in how we do that in our classrooms, as well as this also rolling out into a poster campaign. And in addition, when I came into this, I said there's so many wonderful programs. And I see a number of colleagues in this room here today. So we do still support all of those programs that are part of that connectedness strategy in our schools. But one of the things that was important for us, and again, I did not want to develop another program, but the kids felt it was necessary and take you out of bullying has now become a resource guide. And it's based on a number of scenarios that were developed by BC youth that reflect real scenarios of the four types of bullying. And we are engaging educators and school liaison officers to engage in classroom activities where the kids role play through those activities with the end results of encouraging their parents to come in for performance by that school-based class to talk about each of those types of bullying. And we're seeing huge success from that. And I just, I know I'm out of time here, but I'm around all day and I'm happy to talk with folks more about the four levels of training. And I know that I'll be participating on the panel this afternoon. But I do have to just stress that the evaluation forms and the data that we're getting back from the training is remarkable. And I'll be honest and say, I didn't know what to expect. Kevin and I were both individuals that go to conferences and go to communities where they're inviting us. The race strategy is putting us in communities. And I thought, oh no, this is going to be unlike anything I've experienced before. But I have to tell you, my experience last week, people that were there for the first two days, all of a sudden the room was breaking at the seams on the next day because everybody wanted to be there. And the evaluations are just completely off the charts in relationship to how valuable this has been and what a great use of their time. So for that, Premier Clark, I'd like to thank you. Don McCray, thank you so much for everything you do. And all of our excellent people here that are present. And for all of you, I recognize a lot of people in the room and we've worked together for many, many years. But thanks for remaining to be committed and thanks for all you do. Thank you.