Bullying prevention program hits Kelowna middle schools

On Tuesday Nov 15, the Canadian Red Cross brought their Beyond the Hurt bullying prevention team of youth leaders to Rutland’s Spring Valley Middle School.

The project brought trained youth leaders from high schools in the area to Spring Valley to mentor middle school students on healthy relationships, the impacts of bullying and how to properly intervene in bullying situations.

“There’s two layers to it,” said Red Cross Training Associate Meghan Toal.

“The youth leaders get to develop their own public speaking and group facilitation skills and the middle school students get to learn about building healthy relationships from a respected peer instead of a teacher or parent.” said Toal.

It’s a unique experience that helps bridge the gap between high school students and middle or elementary school students.

The youth leaders who conduct the bully prevention training at the middle schools have all been certified in Respect Education by the Canadian Red Cross.

“Me and some friends went to Vancouver where we learned about what healthy and unhealthy relationships look like, how to help our peers understand the difference between the two and how to intervene properly," said Rutland Senior Secondary student Aaliyah Charles.

Aaliyah and her friends were among more than twenty high school students that visited Spring Valley classrooms to mentor the middle schoolers.

“It’s about creating a better environment in our schools,” expressed Charles,

“A lot of times there’s so much negativity in schools, it’s really about making a better environment for future kids coming into high school.”

The middle schoolers are taught and asked about their opinions regarding different relationship dynamics, the stereotypes of traditional notions of bullying behaviour and addressing relationship issues.

"Often students think of bullying as very upfront, like physical bullying or name calling” said Charles.

“But a lot of times bullying happens behind closed doors or within your friends group, sometimes kids don’t even know their being bullied,” she added.

According to Training Associate Toal, it’s important for schools to get away from labels like bully and victim and move towards addressing the situation as a relationship issue.

“We know it’s more complex than someone is a bully and someone is a victim,”

“Recent tragedies like the Amanda Todd story have created a demand for more proactive solutions, we want students to build relationship skills because at the end of the day social skills are indeed skills and we can learn to build them and practice them.” added Toal.

The Beyond the Hurt program currently has certified youth leaders in three high schools in the area. Students interested in becoming certified and mentoring middle schoolers about healthy relationships can talk to their school councilors about bringing respect education training to their school.