A mother is at her wit's end over continued bullying of her child at East Three Secondary School.
Stewart Burnett/NNSL photo
“I don’t know what to do anymore,” said the mother, who has had to deal with both a son and daughter being harassed in school and out. We've chosen not to name them to protect the identity of the children.
The bullying has eclipsed problems at school and come to her home, where youth have sent prank deliveries to her house, crank-called telling insults and lies, and even surrounded the house in an intimidating way.
Her daughter, a Grade 10 student whose name will be left out of this article, said it has been ongoing since Grade 8, when she started being made fun of for her appearance and the way she dressed.
“It’s everywhere,” she said. “I stopped going out because of it. I stopped going to school. I stopped going to the place I worked at. I stopped going out at all.”
After a situation recently escalated to violence, she took a week off school. She has missed significant school time in the past two years because of the bullying.
“At first it was just a few people, and then it started getting worse,” she said. “People want to judge me by the way I do things.”
She recently confronted the bullies at night, which led to a scuffle. She says people at school have seen the bullying but no one has done anything, so she doesn’t talk about it anymore.
The mother, through tears, worries the violence will escalate. She has tried contacting the school, RCMP and other organizations but has not found a solution to her daughter’s problem.
“I let everything go for a couple years, but after it’s become a physical matter… I’m going to do something about it,” she said. “I don’t know what to do about it, but I’m trying to take it one step at a time.”
East Three Secondary School principal Gene Jenks declined to do an interview on bullying at the school.
He indicated it was something the school is currently dealing with.
The only quote he would provide is as follows: “You can say that you've spoken to the school administration and that they are working hard to both stop the bullying and to educate the students on the importance of modeling respectful and welcoming behaviour.”
Lesa Semmler, chair of the Inuvik District Education Authority, said these issues are dealt with by school administration, as they’re the ones who know the students and interact with them on a daily basis.
“I can say for sure the IDEA does not condone this and in our role can discuss ways with our administration to support them with any plans they may have with preventing bullying in our school,” said Semmler. “The IDEA wants all students and staff to feel comfortable and safe in our school.”
Beaufort Delta Education Council superintendent Chris Gilmour said schools in the territory have all-new tools to deal with bullying as of last year, when they were legislated to ensure they had safe school plans in all schools.
Gilmour said BDEC was fortunate to work with Ray Hughes, a nationally-recognized individual in this field, to implement guidelines and plans to deal with bullying in all BDEC schools.
Those documents define bullying, what to do about it, how to report and manage it and more.
“I feel very confident that the plans and supports we have in place in all of our schools are in fact very effective,” said Gilmour, adding he could not speak to a specific incident but was commenting generally.
He said the biggest priority for the school district is to ensure the safety of all students all of the time, and he feels BDEC schools are better positioned now than they ever have been in being able to deal with bullying, though he admitted there is always room to improve.
Cheryl Zaw, executive director of the Inuvik Youth Centre, said there needs to be a culture shift to deal with bullying.
“You have to face it head on every single time it happens,” said Zaw. “You can’t dodge around it. You dodge around it and then people think, ‘This is okay, I can do this.’”
In every instance of physical harm or harassment, the perpetrating youth should be confronted, she said, suggesting to ask what happened and how that youth felt during the bullying.
“Pretty much universally, they feel terrible,” said Zaw.
“You take youth who are hurting other youth and you let them identify those feelings and work through that, and you work them through the process of considering what are your other options, how else could you handle that situation. We have to be in touch with that, to be taking the time and giving the space to identify how it feels to hurt another person if we want people to stop hurting each other.”
The mother kept her child out of school for the entire week that the bullying recently escalated. She’s desperate for help to bring life back to normal.