 So, I'd like to introduce myself. My name is Dr. Freddie Weinstein, and I'm a psychiatrist. I'm Chief Medical Officer at Dominican Hospital. And today I'm going to be wearing the hat of an official cat herder as we look to kind of wrap up our discussion here with our question and answer panel. Thanks, George. So two of our speakers here, you certainly already know. I have three other people to introduce to you. And then I'll maybe let each of them say a few words about themselves and why they're here. But I have, and I'm going to mess up this last name. So in poll position number three here, I have Rafael Gallardo, not bad, who's a college student and his mom, Mrs. Gallardo. And then at the end, I have Ron Indra, who's a director of the Safe Schools Project here in Santa Cruz. So perhaps maybe I could start with just having Ron tell us a little bit about himself, about his program, and before we get to the formal question and answer session. So the Safe Schools Project has been around for about 10, 12 years. It's funded by the Community Foundation originally, set up on a grant. We're under the Queer Youth Task Force and the Diversity Center. And our job is to protect LGBTQIA students and staff and parents and those perceived as. So doing a lot of good work and there's always a lot to do. I want to do two quick public service announcements. One of them is a shout out in support of our PFLAG organization, which is back up and running. They're very vibrant. And so if you run into parents that need help and support, please direct them to this great resource. They meet once a month. It's a great opportunity for them to talk with other parents. And then I'm going to read this because I want to get this right. I've been asked by the Queer Youth Community Goals Task Force to let you know about an opportunity in the community currently available to mental health professionals to assist LGBTQ youth in our community. The Task Force has representatives from a lot of the organizations in this room and we're currently serving Queer Youth and is committed to creating a healthy and safe environment for youth and their families. And they need help in assisting in trainings, receiving trainings, donating weekly pro bono hours to LGBT students and their parents. And money or bitcoins is always helpful too for what they do, educational materials. And if you're interested, please contact Dr. Jerry Solomon who's in this room and he's head of this board or Bill McCabe of Director of Youth Services and they can direct you to the right people. Thank you. Thank you. So Rafael, would you mind telling us a little bit about yourself and what brings you here this afternoon? Yeah, of course. So I am Rafael Guerrero, student. I went to Harbor High School, Shoreline Middle School and Green Acres. I am currently my first year of Cabrillo and I am hopefully going to a four-year college afterwards to major in psychiatry. I'm here because I was bullied in middle school for what it was. I wasn't sure who I was and now in high school and still hopefully will always be an advocate for this because it's definitely a great thing to help out others in need and just give the word and give the spread of just awareness and of just openness and just be able to let people know that you're not alone. It definitely gets better, so best message out there. All right, thank you. And Mrs. Guerrero, want to tell us a little bit about yourself? I'm Yoli Gallardo. I'm here with my son that I'm very proud of. Ever since I found out, you know, I knew my son was being bullied in school. The minute I found out what was going on, I got very involved, you know, with the school and any chance I, you know, I get a chance to speak to parents, especially to the LGBT community, especially to parents that are only Spanish speaking because they really don't have a place to go. I'm always happy to go and just even very simple, you know, I share my story and they can see that there is hope and that, you know, you're not alone out there and things will get better and yeah, that's pretty much. All right, thank you. Can I share something? Please. Yoli worked for me for many, many years and I watched them, Raphael, grow up and I watched Yoli and I'm just, this is the most incredible family and I watched both of them on their journey and what has been going on and had many hugs and tears in my office through this process and I'm so excited. I didn't know they were gonna be here and I just want another round of, you have no idea the courage of this family and what they've done and what they're doing in the community. I want you to give them another round of applause. All right, so on with the question. So the first question submitted would be directed to Joanne but certainly others can chime in and there were a few questions on this general topic but was how would you, what support, what education can we use to encourage bystanders to break away from the group, especially if that group is populated with the popular kids? How can we support that individual? Good question. So as I said earlier, it's about bringing the youth in and having them help you figure out what to do. So there are several programs out there and I can't recommend any of them but there are a lot that do that. So what I would do is, there's one that particularly that brings in the leaders from each of, we've heard clicks mentioned a lot here. So you bring in each of the click, whatever they're called these days. When I was in school, it was the socias, the jocks. I hung out with the art and drama freaks but anyway, you bring the leaders in from those and you come together and you have a discussion about what's acceptable, what's not acceptable and they all agree. Yeah, that's not cool. And then you take the leader from, even if it's the leader of the bullies, whatever leader it is and you have them go back and they go out to the school and they have the bystanders become upstanders and you work within your school with the leaders from your various groups and change the culture and climate. And so everybody knows it's okay to say that's not okay. And so it's all about changing that culture and that climate and it begins with the young people. You heard the folks here earlier from Soquel saying that's what they've done. They have these groups, they have these clubs and they're making it not okay to do those things. Anyone else wanna take that one on? I'll add to that, I know you can't recommend any programs and actually you don't need a program necessarily for it. You just wanna identify the polls. They're called public opinion leaders so you can ask and you can email me and I can give you a protocol for doing this. You simply ask the kids in a middle school or high school who decides how you dress, what you listen to, who are the public opinion leaders, bring them together and there is green dot that does this around sexual violence but there's other just general programming of working with the youth but you have to find those youth that have the social capital because there's plenty of us that were in middle school and high school and we could have said something and no one would listen anyway. We didn't have the power or the social capital. And so this idea that we have to do this universal programming around by standard intervention actually is not the best approach. We need to find out who are those kids that really, really shape the ways in which the norms are focused and so there's social norming approaches as well. Exactly. It's also something as simple as empowering young people who are bystanders that they don't have to confront the bully because that's frightening. All they have to do is grab the hand of the target and get them to safety. I'm gonna get you into a room. I'm gonna get you to a teacher. I'm gonna get you to the office. Pull the victim out of the situation and it drops the whole power dynamics down. They don't not have to stand up to the bully and they just need to know that. Yes. So the next question was asked in about four or five different ways and probably the most commonly asked category of question was and this could be open to the whole panel is how can we translate some of the learnings to the adult world with adults being bullied by adults, whether it be in the workplace, the NFL locker room and as a sideline to that, is there any studies out there that speak to how bullied adolescents then become bullied adults? It's on you, Dorothy. Okay. Well, I mean, I think that we're only now recognizing that we are sending kids to potentially toxic environments in our schools. So we were starting to realize about 10 years ago that maybe we should be focusing on the adults in the buildings and now only we're really kind of paying attention to that in the school climate improvement process. So if you look at even the work that you're doing in this state and in this district, a lot of what Joanne talked about in the school climate improvement process is first working with the adults in the building, right? Because school climate encompasses everyone. So I think a lot of what we've been doing with kids around SEL or PBIS and PBIS does include the adults, but it doesn't really get to some of the bullying or the mean cruel behaviors. Teachers and staff are just as clicky. They are just as clicky, right? And even when I do in services and professional development, I can see who are the isolated victimized teachers and they have come up to me, right? So I think that we definitely need to focus on the adult culture more. We do know that kids that are victimized in pre-K are more likely to be victimized in middle school, high school, and we are just conducted a college study. If you make it to college, you will also probably be victimized there. You'll be victimized in your partner relationships and you're more likely to be prone for that in the workplace. So there's definitely continuity across the lifespan. I just realized the only program I can promote is Positive Behavior Intervention Support Systems. It's PBIS because it's something that we're doing countywide, region-wide, and that the state supports. And that is one, and that's a very effective practice of, but it's a whole, like she was saying, it has to be all of the adults bought in as well and modeling that behavior. And sometimes there are the most challenging to make change with because you're entrenched in your habits of how you do things. It's just a matter of helping understand empathy, but that is probably the most difficult one, I think, is when you're in those situations, especially work environments, I've been work environments before and I have enough sense of self to go, bye-bye, I'm not gonna be here anymore because I don't wanna be in an environment that's toxic, but not everybody can do that. And I don't know if that does anything to help the person that's making the toxic environment, but that is a very challenging, I don't know if anybody else has any suggestions, I mean, there's research that Dorothy talked about, but I think you just have to start from preschool and help everybody have empathy and understanding and not do the power and control throughout wherever you are so that you become a really solid person and you have empathy and compassion for other people. And I don't know exactly how to do that, so I can't really answer that. Does anybody else? So Santa Cruz City Schools is currently drafting a workplace place bullying policy and it's interesting how much misinformation is out there so part of it is getting the right definition, right examples of it and we know that when we do finish the policy, I'm on the committee, the task force, we're gonna have to do a lot of education, it's gonna have to be rolled out because a lot of these people do not understand, adults don't understand really bullying yet, that's why these seminars, these symposiums are so wonderful because we're getting the word out, so people are clear and the more we do that, we empower adults so they can empower their students. Good job. You can't see Dorothy, it's just a voice over here. There you go, it's just a voice behind the podium. She's actually halfway back home, but now. Just like the video, voice from behind the podium. I'd like to add to that too, I think that as long as the teacher profession is seen as something that we devalue, that we're gonna continue to have environments that are not so positive, right? If teachers continue in their first five years, 60% of them have to be clinically depressed because we put so much burden on them and they can't manage the classroom and we want them to take on all the ills of society, I think we're gonna continue to have this. The work that I do in schools, we work with the adults first and then we work with the kids and a lot of the work that we do is building trust and lowering defensiveness and coming to the table because there's a lot of hurts, there's a lot of history and we don't take what we know about organizational change and take it into the schools. Change is difficult for everyone in here and if you've worked in a school, you know there's a change every year, right? In my districts, there's new superintendents, their tenures don't last very long, they all have agendas, the next person comes in, there's a next agenda. All that does is build mistrust and defensiveness and the accountability is creating a negative climate so we've got to fight against that and it's a matter of just joining. I join with the schools I work with, I don't come in and take from them, I join with them. This is coming just, you know, I'm just the mom but I've always thought. No. Oh. Oh. I'm just, I am the mom. I am the mom. You know, you would think that to teach your little kids compassion, well it's the parent's job, obviously they're doing it but I wonder if it is happening in every household because I don't, you know, it's not the teacher's job to do everything but I've always thought, gosh, maybe if it starts in kindergarten and every year they hear it and they hear some sort of, not a class, but just like a talk, like an assembly kind of thing that something that would happen on a constant basis, you know, maybe twice a year, starting in kindergarten and those kids keep hearing, oh, you know, it is good to be compassionate. Oh, what if that was my little brother? What if, you know, and they just learn. You imagine that it's a normal thing to be compassionate, to have a heart but we're just all a little bit different but I keep thinking if something like that could be implemented, because I can dream, right? If that could happen and then kids keep hearing it and on the other side is to say, it's okay, now I see this more with my daughter. She says, if I see something, I go report it, mom. And before, if it was me, back in the day, I would say, I don't wanna be, you know, I don't want anybody to know that I went and told because that's wrong. So I do see the changes because my daughter says, I don't care, you know, I'll go and defend the kid or I go and tell, you know, this is what I saw. So it's kind of happening, but I feel like the kids just need to hear it on a constant basis because they forget, you know, the summer comes by, they tell all these hormonal changes, they just forget about everything. But if it was a constant reminder, be compassionate, you know, always put yourself in the shoes of that little kid who's being bullied or that could be your little brother, just kind of like compassion 101, I don't know. A next question, slightly a different topic, but what thoughts or support could be given to the bully in recovery as he or she is navigating a home environment where all the new ideas he or she is learning about is seen as being a sign of weakness at home? What can be done to sort of help that adolescent? Okay, that is challenging. As I said earlier, hurt people hurt people and you have to look at where and it's the dysfunctional family, the healthy family, the school and what have you. No one wants to believe that their family is dysfunctional. No one wants to believe that they're doing anything wrong. I mean, hey, you know, my dad beat me, so I beat him, so what's the big deal, you know? And so you have to be very careful of how you do that. So you have to help that young person and there's a lot of support that needs to go around the perpetrator of violence, the person who doesn't have, coming from an environment that doesn't have the compassion 101 that Yoli was talking about and how do you help them do that? It requires probably a really intensive kind of wraparound program. I've done that. I've gone out to the home and modeled it. We can't all do that. I said, I went out to a home one time where this was happening and I went and I said, okay, everybody, we're gonna say one nice thing to each other this morning. I don't know how hard it was for that family to say one nice and I go, oh, nope, nice. Say something nice. If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything. And after I went out with them every day for a week, after a while, they changed the habit and they started saying nice things. They started having compassion, but it's really, really difficult when it's entrenched into whatever they've been doing and they don't see anything wrong with that. They think that keeps you tough, that's what you need to do or it's the other side, well, if he picks on me then I told him to pick on, you know, whatever it is. Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth, kind of a mentality. And it's a very difficult thing to change a culture, but what you can focus in on, which is what I've done, is everyone has the right to be safe. What can we do to all work together so no one feels the way this person felt? And how can you do things? Because nice begets nice. And I'm constantly telling the families, nice begets nice. When you say something nice to somebody, they feel good. When you say something nasty, well, they'll say something nasty back. So that's the only thing that I've seen, that I have to do, but it's a lot of work and there may be others who know other programs, but that, it takes a long time to shift a culture, to shift the home environment or you can put surrounds the youth, you can't change that, we can just change how you react and protect you from that and help you to see the world in a different lens. I can't change this lens that's over here and you have to understand why there is this, what's happened with your family, what's happened, why are they going through these things, but that doesn't have to be you and help them see that they can be somebody different. So those are the two different approaches that I've attempted over the years. Yeah, I interview a lot of kids that engage in the behaviors that we've defined as bullying here today and it doesn't take very long to get them to recognize that their behavior is maybe adapted for them, but they're hurtful towards the victims. You have to understand in developmental psychology, kids have the capacity to code switch, right? And in fact, many of the kids I work with, we can teach them all this great social emotional learning and all these strategies, but that will put them in danger on the street and in their community, right? And so when we do SEL kind of programming in the classroom, but yet they have to walk out to the streets of Chicago or they have to go into a neighborhood that may not be an inner city, but maybe in rural where it's just tough, my people, the white people from the trailer parks, my people. Those are my people too. So I think that I talk to kids about, I do not pathologize their behavior. I talk to them about the scale of adaptiveness and the fact that the ways in which they're getting through life works for them in those contexts, but in the school they need to code switch. And many of us that lived in an environment that's different than the positive schools and we had to go home to those places every night, we code switched. And teachers helped me code switch, right? We help, I help other kids code switch and say, we're going to show you something different, right? So I think really recognizing, not giving up on the kids, knowing that you're not going to probably stop what is the transmission, intergenerational transmission of violence in this country that's pretty robust. And we don't have as many family level interventions like family checkup that we need and we certainly can't reach all the families. We need to break the cycle. And every kid that sits in front of you that has like a constant referrals for what's called bullying behavior, see it as adaptive and see it as adaptive in their context, but see if you can get them to do something different. They can have two repertoires, really. That's my opinion and based on research. Is this a run? I want to really support that. I've worked with a lot of perpetrators and from all the way down to elementary school, they understand that there can be two distinct environments, one at home and one at school. And when the example at school is supportive, they understand that they can adapt to it and then switch back and forth. They're very, very capable. We're selling ourselves short. We're selling them short. If we think they can't do that or that they don't have the ability to do that, they do, they're very wise. The next question sort of relates to a different type of adaptation, I'd say. This would have to be more sort of a Darwinian survival of the fittest question. So bullying, does it, across time, across cultures, does it offer some advantage? Why is it still with us? Of course it does. Yes, yes, yes. This is why it's so hard to reduce. Some of the earliest writings on bullying was conducted by Patricia Holly who studied primates in her dissertation. She's now in Texas Tech and she still thinks that we're just kind of animals at the zoo, right? The same hierarchies we see in middle school and high school that the students talked about, those can be identified in primate populations at the zoo. If you took a class from me, we would have a field trip to the zoo. Why are we watching the primates? Because they look like middle school kids, right? And you have different leaders and the gender dynamic and the type of aggression that's used. Now, I temper those comments depending on the state I'm in because not everybody believes that we are somehow linked to the primate, right? So, but I'm in California so I think I could do that. So we certainly know from animal models that what we're seeing, adaptiveness, and when I just talked about the adaptiveness, there's a great paper that I can send you in developmental psychology that says what we can learn from the five tenets that we can learn from evolutionary psychology and one is around aggressive behavior. This is why it's so difficult to change this because you can identify hierarchies that really promote aggression. And so I think of a dear colleague of mine who does great work in elementary schools and he shows that if there's a hierarchical structure and the teacher has kind of more popular kids, hierarchical structure, there's more aggression. If we teach the teachers to make it more egalitarian, so there's less, that structure, less bullying, there's less aggression. But teachers aren't taught how to do that, right? And so, yes, I love that question. And yes, Darwin would be like, look at that, I told you. Hey, I got nothing, that was good. I love it. The next question, maybe like to have Raphael comment first but then open it up to the whole panel. I know Dorothy touched upon it during some of her opening remarks but the concept of punishment and criminalization of bullying, most recently a Senate bill introduced to Audrey's law, Senate bill 838 in response to a young woman who was suicided after a sexual assault and pictures being posted on the internet. Would that have helped? Would more laws help? Honestly, it's really difficult to say that would really help victimization. I think it really all depends on the, I don't know, it's kind of a difficult question to answer honestly. I remember I took a human sexuality class and we did this thing about just about aggressiveness and just anything that gets to the point of bullying and then to the point of, we talked about smaller parts, we're talking about cyberbullying. I don't know, I think I'm just always missing out on that. Okay, we can maybe open it up to others and if you have other ideas you can come back. So others, the thoughts of criminalization of bullying and the legislation that's out there. This is a Joanna and Val and personal comment, no research. I just, we need to have regulatory and like the construction and everything but the more you criminalize something that is coming from hurt and pain and trauma, I mean, think about that. It isn't, is that the right thing to do? In those situations where you are, someone has done something to harm themselves or others and you're criminalizing that, well what caused that to happen? You know, I mean, is it the right thing? I mean, yeah, we have to have laws, we have to have stop things but to really criminalize someone that is coming from a point of such intense pain or behavior that we, it's the same thing as the traumatic brain injuries or post-traumatic stress or any of those kinds of things. Are they criminals? Really, ask yourself that. I'd like to remind us all of how we fought truancy. Let's remind ourselves. What did we do when kids weren't showing up at school? We suspended them. That's not very good. We put them back on the streets so they could go through your house while you're at work. We then find the parents. Remember this? We find the parents. We then were going to criminalize the parents if they didn't get the kids to school. This was all because we wanted the kids in the seat so that that kid could be counted for, let's not be confused about what that is, right? We needed that body. What we're now recognizing in truancy, and I think this is gonna parallel very quickly to the cyberbullying and just kind of criminalization of bullying is now we realize that we had the kids sitting in the seat but they didn't want to be there. So what happened is you had a kid that showed up because you find the parents, or the parents were going to spend some time in jail because we have so many cells to put them in, and so then the kid didn't want to be there and what would they do? They'd act out so they could get suspended again. Only now our truancy is moving toward how do we build relationships between teachers and students so the students want to be there? We cannot criminalize parenting. And this is essentially what we're doing with cyberbullying and many of these legislation is gonna be put on the parents. And that's well and good, because parents that monitor their kids, their kids are probably not likely to get in trouble. There'll be a small percentages. The parents that already do not monitor their kids were just, I'm telling you, we are criminalizing kids that have undeveloped brains and do not have the adults around them modeling appropriate behavior, right? There was something, I don't know if it was in California, maybe it was, and when a Monday in LA I was there, there was a woman that drove her daughter to a fight and she helped her daughter in the fight, right? So what are we gonna do with that? So I think we should learn from past mistakes. The legislation and the legal, this criminalization is coming from parents that are hurting deeply and this is the way in which they're coping with the loss of their children. But I don't know where we're gonna put these kids in some of these states. You can be up to one year in jail for engaging in cyberbullying, right? And this young lady from what I understand with this new bill, there was sexual assault. I mean, this is major criminal behavior. It wasn't cyberbullying, it was major, major criminal behavior. Call it what it is. And I just wanted to share about the truancy issue. In Santa Cruz County, what you're talking about, we now have a group called Keeping Kids in School that is looking about all those things that Dorothy's talking about. We're looking about trauma-informed care, restorative justice, creating situations to understand the why children aren't going into school. And even though we have our truancy mediation and school tennis review boards, we're looking at, wait a minute, huh? They don't wanna be here. Why don't they wanna be here? What's going on? And how can we help them adjust and be better in our classrooms? So it's not just a body and a chair so we can get the dollars. So we really have someone, like the Maslow's hierarchy, really they're wanting to learn and being able to feel safe and able to learn. So we're doing that in Santa Cruz. You probably don't know that. Aronisa. So I think awareness is really the key because when legislature makes a law, then they kinda wash their hands oh that problem is over with, we've taken care of it and then it leaves us to deal with a mess. I clerked in law school for a federal judge and he did everything he could not to put someone in jail or prison because he said if they haven't gone bad yet, they will by the time they get out. So he would try to find programs. So criminalizing everything just like war on drugs is not gonna work. We have to get to the root so why we have a problem. And that's a lot more difficult. Any other thoughts about that or? I think now that, honestly, clarifying up the door to be especially in Joanne, I think I really understood it more. It definitely, education is probably the biggest part when it comes down to it because like what I was saying about human sexuality, once you do that it's just defeating the purpose of it. If you do that it's just a cycle. There's some kids I've seen before where they're are you afraid of jail? No, do you know what's gonna happen? Yeah, so why do you not care? I just don't. They just don't, it just comes down to education. They just like they said they can go for one year, they can go for as long as they can and sometimes they just don't learn. It just comes down to education, compassion and just pretty much is learning. Legislature, I remember doing something like that too in the class too where they said, will these laws, will these new things help out? It will help out but it's not the answer. So I think it definitely comes down to the home, education and just different aspects of life that can help out with just preventing it overall. Thank you. Today we heard several examples of school administrators and school teachers either not wanting to get it or not getting it or not having enough time to get it or enough patience to get it or whatever. What is out there that's specifically aimed at educating the educators? I'm gonna look at the educator down there and then I'll chime in. Well besides that huge salary we get and the golden parachute, we're here because we're here for the kids. So when I work with administrators, when I work with staff, these are all people who want to help and they're looking for tools, help me. Often it's down and dirty because they are overwhelmed with all the things on their plate, the newest test, no child left standing, whatever the new thing coming around. So it's about helping and giving teachers the tools so they can work with the kids which is why they're there. They're there for their students. So it's education. And for me, I'm at the county office and I'm a regional lead and I have people calling me all the time and I will go out, I just went to a middle school recently and sat down with them and looked at their safe schools plan, look at their policies, look at their programs and they generally, they're so overwhelmed with what's going on, there's so many things going on and it's just a matter of okay, here's an easy way to do this. It doesn't take a lot of work, here's how you can do it and here's what you're doing already that you can just expand upon. But it does get overwhelming when you have legislation that says thou shalt do X, Y, and Z and you'll do it in this timeframe and you're going what? And so my job at the county office is to kind of go out and say it's not that bad, let's just see what you got. So there's those support systems for administrators to assist with the policy writing and be that liaison between the state and the districts and the region and all these things. So that's what's available for administrators from the county office as well as the various programs that we have to help you address all these things and linkages to, even though I'm not advertising them here because I can't, but when I'm with you one-on-one I'll say, well, did you try this? How did that work for you? Because I know a lot of different programs. Please. In my own very humble way, as a mom again, I totally understand how teachers are so busy. I know a lot of teachers. I know school's over, but it's not over for them. They still have hours of paperwork to do and they're overwhelmed. And I know it's probably easier to say, what was that, was that kid bullying that kid? It's fine. It's probably really a lot easier to just kind of turn the other way because you guys are so overwhelmed. But as a parent, this is like a plea to all the teachers out there, counselors. School staff, to consider the fact that just by paying attention, and I know going through all the paperwork and reporting everything, you don't know the level of the bullying that's going on. And it could be that they're just pushing that kid, but it could be that that kid goes home and considers suicide. You don't know how bad it is. You might think it's not a big deal. I'm just gonna look the other way. And not knowing that that could happen. I mean, I know, and I've never discussed this in a room with my son next to me, but he's older now, you know? And when he was in middle school and he was bullied, I knew something, you know, I knew he was being bullied, but he, I don't know why, we're always been very connected. So I knew he was trying to protect mom. So he wouldn't tell me about it, but deep in my heart, I knew something was going on. Eventually he told me, yeah, I've been bullied for the past two and a half years in middle school and that just broke my heart. He told me what was happening and everything. And I said, wait, how can it be possible that all the things that had happened were not, you know, nonchalant kind of things. I mean, they were obvious, you know, like, you know, I'm not gonna go into it because he is here, but a lot of very aggressive behavior towards him. That could have been seen, had to be seen, had to be heard by somebody in two and a half years. Nobody ever really wanted to maybe get involved. And like I said, I'm not saying, oh my gosh, how could they do that? You know, they're busy, they're overwhelmed, they're probably thinking, you know, the parents will take care of it. Maybe the kid is gonna defend himself. My son suffered so much for two and a half years. Not, he wouldn't tell me until I got it out of him. I don't know how, but I did. And, but before he told me, because I knew as a mom, and I'm gonna go into like the deepest, like the darkest hours as a mom. And I remember walking from my kitchen to the hall to get to his room, and he would always have the door closed, and I knew he was very, very depressed. And we've always been very connected. So I knew, you know, I was afraid, I was afraid he would do something horrible. So I remember for a long time, and being in my shoes for like one time, you know, and it's hard, I would walk, you know, to his room. And before I opened that door, I just prayed to God that my son would be there doing his homework or watching TV. And that's all I wanted. I didn't know what I was gonna see when I would open that door. And that happened for a long, long time. I sticked with him, I made through so much. And I think because I was so on him, I mean, I even, I mean, I can't think of the word, but I would tell him, you know, oh my gosh, honey, you know, what would you do if something happened to me? And he would say, oh mom, don't you? I would say, well multiply that by three million. And that's how I would feel if something happened to you. I would die if something happened to you because I was so afraid he would commit suicide because he was so depressed. And he would say things like, I don't get it, mom, you know, what is there to look forward to? And I mean, just a lot of things he would say that I thought, oh my gosh, he doesn't see anything positive in the future because he's going to this place where he's being punished every day. And I'm making him go there because it's school. And so I'm just asking that, you know, as a school staff, teacher, counselor, when you see something, I know it's not your job. You're not the only person that's in charge, but if you see something, please take the time and do get involved and go talk to the kid and give him some hope. Well, thank you for sharing that with us. That's certainly something that all the research in the world is wonderful. And that is, it doesn't drive it home like a real story. Can I add something? I would add to that that if there's teachers that are seeing things, if you could simply just keep your own kind of notebook, connect with your dean of students, let your principal know. Oftentimes kids that are chronically victimized, more than one adult notices it, right? We had a particular case in the state of Ohio where a Croatian immigrant family moved into this state and this particular affluent high school was known for the immigrant populations being bullied, essentially. And they had had two suicides in the last year. This Croatian young girl was chronically victimized and it was a huge high school, right? So sometimes you can just kind of, people aren't communicating because it's huge. Like 3,000 people. Well, it turned out after she took her life because they blamed her and sent her home for homeschooling, found out that her parents had been to the school, did not speak English, had to speak through the older daughter, 40 times. This young girl had signed into the nurse's office 220 times, right? Security guard knew about it. A teacher over here, but they never talked, right? So just hyper-communicate, communicate, communicate. You don't have to necessarily, sometimes teachers hand it over to a dean of students and they assume that it was taken care of. If you see an escalation, if you see a child changing in their behavior, if they're dropping out of sport, that's a big, big sign if they're dropping out of sport, if they're not showing up to places where they used to be, that they look different. I don't think it takes that much extra work to say to somebody, I'm concerned about this student. I mean, I just think, I don't buy it. And we're all busy, but we all can ethically, we need to together communicate. And in many of these instances, when bullying happens, the parents aren't even called, right? I mean, this is basic kind of stuff. And I have to say, I work with really good administrators too, that as soon as something happens, they're on top of it. So we don't wanna make, put this message out there that it's everybody's negative. I have administrators that are just as stressed out as others and they will make a phone call and they will promise those parents that they will take care of that situation and they do not have these things that go unaddressed. But we also do not hold schools accountable. We need, we cannot just have parents pleading, please, please do your job. Just do your job. And let's hold everybody accountable. If we want to take on this youth suicide problem that we do have that's associated with depression, we have got to start talking to parents and say administrators, if you're concerned about losing your job, then you're not in it for the right reason. You're in it to save kids. And you know, it's not complicated. You see it, the child become quiet in the class, the students stop talking, withdrawing, hood up, earphones on, not paying attention anymore. You see these personality shifts to hold them back after class, just say, can you stay after for a second? And sometime just like, what's going on or I'm worried about you or I've seen a change. Often they want to talk to someone and they don't know who to talk to. So just opening that door can often, they unload. Sometimes school is the safest place for them and teachers can help them. They can save them and get with them. And I tell teachers, you don't have to have the answers. You just have to open up the communication and then we can get you the resources you need. We can get that student the resources they need, but you're so important. You make such a difference if you just take a second. So we've heard a discussion about the environment in which bullying arises. There were a couple of questions about the psychological makeup of a bully. Any research that's out there about that? Take a, Dorothy, you want to take a shot at that? Yeah, so I talked about the ineffective and effective aggressor, right? So we do have a certain percentage of the kids that engage in these bullying behaviors that just have general callousness, right? So it is the sociopath in some ways, that there's just a callousness and they're on that trajectory to be antisocial personality disorder. What we don't understand more about is that effective aggressor, right? Because we haven't really tracked in the United States with good measurement the different types of bullying. Essentially we just asked, did you bully as a kid? And they said that's not really getting to the nuances of this. There is some suggestion that some of the kids that engage in these behaviors actually go on to have very thriving careers in which they can supplement those, that's so Freudian, right? Supplement that need for control and doblement into other things, whether they're, I like to say police officers, but that's just, I interview them when they pull me over for speeding tickets. And so that doesn't help with the speeding ticket, but it helps with my field research. Some would say in the academy, I think I feel like I sit next to some folks that probably engaged in these behaviors. And certainly if you're in criminal law and other professions where that type of behavior is valued and actually reinforced, then I think people find their way there. So let's not see that these kids are just on that criminal trajectory, you could be sitting next to them in your workplace, you could actually partner with them for life. And so I think it's complex. I think human nature and the ways in which this behavior works for us in many, many, many ways. And so what we try to do is to understand that it's adaptive, but if it starts to impact and there are victims around you, then we're concerned. So that's kind of a politician answer to say that there's all types of kids that engage in this behavior and they end up in all kinds of places and it's not always in a prison. So we usually save the last 15 minutes of soul for wrap up, words of wisdom, parting thoughts, feedback to our community from our panel speakers. So maybe we can just start from one end to the other. I've said so much, I've lost my voice. Okay, wanna start with Ron? I think just education, more presentations like this, so people can understand the dynamics where it comes from, get rid of all the misinformation. There's so much misinformation out there and there's so many people that wanna do good. I mean, that's our general nature. So to empower people, to step up, all the studies say that that's really our nature is to help people, to work with people, to do good, but sometimes we need tools and we need understanding and particularly in this field, we definitely need a lot more. Well like I said, to educate the kids from day one when they're little, not educate them, I don't mean that, but so they learn about what to do in those cases. And also the school staff to get involved. Like I said before, it's not your job. Parents should know what's going on with their kids, but sometimes they spend so much time in school to just get involved, to just take the time to get involved and go, like Mr. Indra said, to go and ask the kid. Sometimes they just wanna know that somebody cares. So, well first thing I wanna say, sorry if I couldn't speak much, I think I was surrounded by all these educated adults, I couldn't really say much about these big questions. But what I could say is that everybody has their own position to help out. I think what my mom was saying, everybody else was saying was it may not always be the teachers, parents should help. I think anybody, whether you're a teacher, a counselor, a parent, uncle, friend, whichever, if you see something just say something the simplest thing. I remember in high school, when I finally came out of my sophomore year, I was unbelievably happy, all my friends, I had all these support and all that stuff, and people just started randomly coming out to me. I was really confused, I was like so, and then they would talk to me and say, can I tell you something? I'm like yeah, sure, and then they told me and I was really just surprised that they would just come up to me and tell me this big thing. And it's just little things, like if I just, for some reason said no, I don't really want to bother with that, it's your own problem. Just helping out and just listening and just, I remember I heard this thing, I remember what it was, it was the four L's. It was look, listen, learn, and love. If you listen, you can actually listen and see all the things, and look and witness all the things that just surround around you that you don't notice, and that can really affect someone and affect yourself and affect someone else in a long-term effect. If you learn, you can teach yourself all new things and you can teach other people new things, and with that, if you can learn, and if you can teach other people, then they can love also. So. Very nice, Rocky. Yes. Yes. Thank you. I think you just educated quite a few educated adults, so thank you. Yes, very, very good. So for me, my final word, it kind of falls along with that, but not so much, but it's introspective. You really need to know who you are, and where your biases are, and where you're, where you lay, and what you feel about this stuff, and how you want to be presenting things. If you look towards yourself, and you want to be the change, you want to make sure your classrooms are safe, you want to make sure that you're not, who are you, what are you doing? And if you just start, it sounds like a Michael Jackson song, doesn't it? Start with a person in the mirror, but yeah. But really, that's just my message. If you just start with you, and look at you, and how you relate to things, and wow, I am judging that person. Where does that come from? And identifying that, and acknowledging it, like, oh, I understand. I need to understand about that particular group of people, or that person, or why my prejudices are coming out, that I actually may say something that could be considered not so okay. And when you exhibit that behavior, and you exhibit that kind of profile to young people, and you be the answer, then you're gonna help in a long way, and so it really starts, each person can do something. It's the power of one, as the movie said. You were hard to follow too. Yeah, I get it. Pay back. So I'm that kind of blend of some kind of researcher with their personal disclosures, so it's a little confusing for you all, she's still. So I mean, I think that one, we need to recognize that the bullying issue hasn't gone away in the last couple of decades. It hasn't gone away in the last three years, even with heightened awareness, and the general public understanding that this is something we need to address. There are no quick fixes. It's gonna take us quite a long time, and unfortunately right now, not to be the Debbie Downer, there's some pushback in some of our states in this country, even for some of the strides. It feels as if we make some steps forward, and I feel like I'm walking backwards on some days, not like the days I'm in Santa Cruz. This was just really good. This pushed me right into that. I'm motivated for the next year. So I appreciate that. But you're the consumers, right? There's a hyper-commercialization of bullying prevention. I said this this morning. When you have the Kardashians promoting bullying prevention for Sears, it's a very scary, scary phenomenon. And I mean, I've been known to stop at that channel every once in a while and watch the Kardashians, and shame on me. Anyway, you know, and I've talked to Sears. Like, do you think they're really they're the best spokesperson for this? And so I think that there's a hyper-commercialization. So the school districts and administrators are going to be sold, programs that will not work. We have limited resources. We have to use the research to guide our decisions. If a program is not on the registry or if it doesn't fit your context, do not implement it. It is a waste of your time. Do what you need to do to understand what's happening in your schools and your school district. There is not one size that fits all. I've written about this for two decades. What I do in Chicago Public Schools Southside versus the Northside of the same district, 52 miles away, is very, very different. Within a district, school could be two miles away from each other. They have different phenomena that they need to chase. Collect your own data. You have your own data. Many of you will do the youth behavior surveillance. Use the data. We're data-driven. Remember we do this? And so if you don't have the monies to do an evaluation for things that you're doing, use the data that you already have in place. And I think also, we cannot continue just to point at schools. I do a lot of work in schools, but my work is branched out in the last three years to include faith-based organizations. So it's where the kids are. That's where the families are. We're starting to talk to coaches in the last two years. They thought, I remember when they called two years ago and they said, we think we're part of the problem. I was like, you think, thanks for calling. Let's get to work. After school programs, we have to recognize that anywhere a child resides, any context, that we have to send the message of caring, respectful behavior. I tend to talk to strangers wherever I go. It's probably gonna get me in trouble at some point. Santa Cruz looks like a really good place to talk to strangers, I'm just saying. So, but I talk to kids and I'll end with this story. I was in a Southside school in our city, Chicago, and I'm waiting for, it's one of those schools where they can't find the principal and the secretary is not so nice. So I sit there, I used to dive, you know, whatever. I sit in offices and I watched the climate. So it's not such a good, positive school climate. This kid who's rather large, and I said, he's just a big kid. I was like, what grade you in? He was like six. I was like, wow, you're gonna play football. You know, he's just big. And I was like, what did you do? He was like, I have to see the principal. I was like, what did you do? He was like, I'm big, so they think they can mess with me. And he said, they come at me every, I said, I saw a little something happen over there before school. And he was like, yeah, they came at me and I just couldn't take it. I had to just pin him. I didn't hurt him, I just pinned him. And he thought we were gonna have this ongoing conversation and I just turned to him and I said, what's your name? And he said, Michael. And I said, so Michael, what's your favorite academic subject? I said, because it's gonna be stressful when you go in there, so we might as well talk about something else. And he said math. And the cause of the principal was still never found. It was 15 minutes later. I understood why he wanted math and why he liked to study math. I enrolled him in a math subject down in the summer program at the University of Illinois. And Mike now is going to be attending the University of Illinois. And it's all because I sat there and said, I changed one person's life. Every youth you have. We don't wanna talk to kids that are being disrespectful on buses. We don't wanna evolve because they can pull out a gun, they can shoot us, I don't know, we're all fearful. No, they're kids. Let's talk to them about their behavior. Let's talk to kids, let's reach out for them. They have aspirations. Their behavior does not define them. And Michael, that was the most, there's a lot of serendipity in my life these days, I have to say. And that was one case that was just a beautiful time where you can make a big difference. Big difference. One kid at a time. Yeah. So I'd like to end with a special thank you to all our speakers and our panel members and our high school students. Yay. A special thank you to the Nathalie Calciano family. A special thank you to the Dominican Foundation, to the committee planning committee that works all year long to bring this together. And an extra special thank you. You heard his name mentioned, I think seven times today, to George, where is George? This, if there was a single person that makes this happen each and every year, it is George. And without him, this really wouldn't come together. So thank you, George. Thank you. Oh, and of course, let's see. Ooh, okay, avoid Highway 1 South, accident between Soquel and 41st. And please don't forget to turn in your evals and suggestions for next year's topic. All right, everybody drive safely. Thank you.