New book, Stopping the Brain Drain of Skilled Veteran Teachers, is at Amazon.com

Just in! New book, Stopping the Brain Drain of Skilled Veteran Teachers: retaining and valuing their hard-won experience, is at Amazon.com.  Also see my other books. Click on by entering William Fibkins in search button.

Step Two-Training Teachers as Advisors and Helpers.......

Session One-This session focus is on promoting the belief that many teachers already possess good helping skills. Skills they are unaware of  because they aren't considered important in their academic teaching role nor in the  supervisory and evaluation process. This is the time  to begin asking teachers what helping skills they possess and what skills they lack. This session then lays out a training curriculum suggested by teachers themselves. A process  which focuses on their own teaching world,  emphasizing what skills works well and what skills needs improvement.   And most important in these opening conversations is that the " teaching of helping skills" centers on  teachers converations rather than lectures by the trainers.  Remember teachers idea of " training," based on  their past experiences, is sitting siently while being lectured to by an outside expert. Teachers are seldom asked to share their insights, knowledge, and concerns.  Being asked to " talk" about what they know and need is new and unfamiliar teritory.  Yet it can be a welcome breath of  fresh air.  There is also a subtle teaching lesson in this process. If teachers are encouraged to " talk" about their own experience, they may learn that the same process is needed by  students, parents, and colleagues in need of an open door for help.

Session Two-This session focuses on why becoming an advisor and helper can improve their teaching skills and relations  with student, parents and colleagues. It's a " what's in it for me" session. Here are a few examples of the topics to be convered in this session:
1.Helping  students resolve their personal and well-being problems can serve to incease their chances for academic success and help them avoid isolation, risky behaviors ,school failure, and dropping out.
2. When teachers become helpers they become learners again. When teachers enter the profession they develop an " academic " persona and work style that follows them throughout their career. They often have little  awareness or importance  about the non-academic side of their  career. However in becoming advisors and helpers they are thrust into assesing the helping skills they have and learning the new skills to be successful. It's a challenging change and like most new learners they become energized, curious, and also  confused , anxious and uncertain. This new found energy can help them to find professional  renewal and capture the thrills and risk that can come with change.
3. When teachers become helpers they become more effecive teachers for " all" their students. This new role requires teachers to move beyond their one-dimensional academic role. What is now required is to view the whole student; personality, culture, background, successes and failures, health and wellness, relationships, family life, hopes and dreams.
4, When teachers become helpers they become more coupled with other teachers. Academic teachers often appear self-sufficient; they usually work alone and tend to be isolated from colleagues.When teachers beome advisors that changes.   Even teachers who are skilled advisers will encounter student problems that will leave them uncertain and confused  about how to respond. But they are not alone. As an advisor they will have a group of colleagues to serve as their support network, offering feedback on how to intervene.

Session Three-When teachers become helpers they begin to recall how they were helped or not helped as they tried to navigate through their risky teen years. Here are some examples of the topics to be covered:
1. What educators helped guide you during your teen years?
2. What skills did these educators have? Were they good listeners? Nonjudgemental? Encouraging? Capable of delivering critical feedback in a postive way that made sense to you? Were they accessible, trusting,  and able to make you feel safe, at home?
3.What words of encouragement and support did they use when talking with you? Do you still hear their words and use them with your students?
4. Have you modeled your professional life after these educators? Many teachers go into the teaching profession because they encountered positive teacher helpers in their own experience and want to pass on this care and guidance to their students.
5. And of course you probably have intereacted with teachers who lacked the helping skills, caring, and compassion you needed as a teenager. What were they like? How did they rebuff your effort to get the help you needed? Do you still try to avoid using the their words ? Words that send needy teens quickly away.

Session Four- When teachers become helpers they begin to become aware that they often tend  to help certain  students and avoid  helping others who they may  dislike, make them feel uneasy,anxious, and wish they would seek help from someone else. All normal feelings, but feelings that they need to explored and helped to find some positive human connection with.  Here are some of the topics that can be covered in  this session:
1, What are the characteristics of the students you like? For example, do you feel more comfortable with female than male students ? The brightest and more articulate students? Students who are well-behaved? Students who praise you?
2. What part does gender, race , color, culture, appearance, personality, and ability play in determining who you like to help and guide and those who don't fit on your helpig list ?
3. What personal needs of your are met through interactions with your favorite students? Are your needs for praise, affirmation, and support met by interacting with these students? We all come to our work setting with personal needs to be met, But is your overall efficiency as a teacher being diminished by focusing too much on students who are most like you, interest you, and make you feel comfortable?
4. In order to raise your awareness  about who you " include" and who you " avoid" in the helping process make a list of your profile for who you include and who you avoid. Remember we all come into teaching carrying baggage from our upbringing and family lives. It's only natural that we bring our own bias to the classroom. However ignoring these bias and not putting in the work to change them leaves each one of us being less than we could be, never reaching the goal of   becoming a great teacher.

Session Five- When teachers become helpers they become aware that their are certain problems they like to help with and problems they tend to avoid.. Her are some exmples of the topics in this session:
1, What kinds of problems do you like to help with, even gravitate toward?
2. What kinds of problems do you avoid, want to run away from, may even frighten you?
3. Here's a list of common problems teens face. Which appeal to you? Which send a red light of caution off in your mind and  belly?  Here they are: school problems such as failure and poor achievement, conflicts with teachers and peers, hostile,  abusive,  pressure  parents, family crisis such as divorce, death and loss, suicide , emotional, physical, and sexual abuse, eating disorders, tobacco, alcohol, and drug abuse, bullying.
4. Time for truth. Make a list of those problems you tend to gravitate towards and those who make you think " I'm out of here , referral right away. "

This kind of training session can be offered in two -hour intervals during the school week or on weekends.

Many students, parents, and a-risk educators are in need of intervention, support, and an open door to find help and a respit. Teachers are ideally positions to offer this support if they are encouraged, trained,  and in the end required to help their students achieve both academic gains and personal growth.. One need not interfere with the other, We need teachers  to elevate their role and expect them to be responsile strewards of the schools in which they teach. Teachers who can plant little seeds of hope and opportunity. Teachers who can say to their students, " you are valued and you can take your rightful place in the world." I believe the training program I descried above is beginning step in helping teachers learn how to think, speak, and act so their students are valued and cared for.

Here  are more extensive resources concerning " why" and "how" we need to bring teachers on baord as helpers:
William L Fibkins, An Educator's Guide to Understanding the Personal Side of Students' Lives. Rowan and Littlefield Education, http://www.rowmaneducation.com/.
William L. Fibkins, Students in Trouble: Schools Can Help Before Failure. Also Rowman and Littlefield
William L. Fibkins, "Training Middle School Teachers To Be Effective Helpers." Schools in the Middle, NASSP, April 1999, pg. 6-8
William L. Fibkins, " Stronger Advisory Programs can Stem the Spread of School Violence., " ,Middle Ground, NMSA, Oct. 1999, pg. 41-42

Step One in Training Teachers as Advisors and Helpers to Offer an Open Door for Troubled Students, Parents, and Colleagues

Training teachers as advisors and helpers to intervene, guide and support troubled teens, parents, and educators  is a win-win program for our secondary schools. Why? Let's do the math.  A high proportion of these schools enroll 2,500 or more students.  It's unreal for policy makers to think that a few guidance counselors, socal workers, and school psychologists can meet the growing personal needs of at- risk teens, parents, and educators. A constituency  heading towards the margins of school and community life and becoming locked in a permanent cycle of failure.   

So what's the answer to this growing problem? Who do we turn to  join  in this effort to help  members of the school comunity when they encounter tough times and need a caring adult to guide them out of their troubled lives?  Again , let's do the math. The obvious answer is teachers on the frontlines of the school who daily observe students in need of intervention.  However to get teachers involved as advisors and helpers they need to be sold on this new role, be well-trained in the helping-intervention-referral process, and expected to act, not look the other way, when intervention is clearly needed. No, not every teacher will become a become a great helper but they need to understand, be required, to give it their best shot.  That means helping students, parents, and colleagues becomes a critical element in  the supervision process between administrators and teachers.

This new role for teachers, I called it a "dual" role,  being both an academic teacher as well as personal advisor and helper, calls for an expanded definition of  what is " the work of teachers." For far too long we have allowed teachers to define their role in academic terms. When they observed teens heading for trouble their reaction has often been to say, " not my job to help, that's the counselors job," or to quickly refer these students and absolve themselves from further responsibility to stay involved.  Given the increasing personal problems of students, parents, and colleagues, that definition of " the work of teachers" demands change. 

However any proposal for teachers to take on a dual role will be no walk in the park. We should expect great resistance from teachers to come on board with this new role. And much of their resistance is understandable.  We simply can't expect teachers to embrace this new helping role without vocalizing their discomfort  and anger . They are right when many of them say, " I'm not trained to be a counselor." In  selling this new role it is important to hear their voices, understand their anxiety, and in this beginning process demystify the helping role. That is make it seem doable so resisiting teachers can see themselves as being able to handle this new role without appearing inadequate or a failure. 

One of the best ways to proceed is to help teacher remember how they were helped or not helped with personal problems by a teacher, coach, school nurse, or  administrator..  What helping words and interventions worked to help them solve problems? What were these helpers like? Caring? Involved? At their side when all seemed lost? And what words and interventions did the helpers who  failed them use? What were these helpers like? Aloof? Too busy? Quick to refer them to others? Too busy with college admissions counsling and scheduling? Not a priority?

Using the teachers own personal history serves to help remind them how they were helped or not helped and what words and interventions worked. Words and interventions they can adopt in  this new role and remind them one does not have to have a M.A. or Ph.D in  counseing to help others. And remind them that what is important in helping is one's caring, accessibility, and ongoing support.A person to be counted on. And to suggest by becoming advisors and helpers they will get to know their students, parents, and colleagues well, learn to embrace them on a personal level, and stop hiding behind " I am just an academic teacher" " In  the process, become a real person to others and themselves.

In Step Two to follow I will provide a training process that can be offered by a team composed of skilled counselors and  teachers along with the support of key staff resources such as a school nurse and  administrator. Because of the limit of space this is a simplified version. In Step Two I will list where followers can find a more detailed training process.

Angel Teachers: Educators Who Care About Kids

There has always been a divide between teachers who view their job description solely as academic teachers and those who see their job as both academic teachers and advisng students on personal and well being problems. A dual role that is much in demand to help the increasing number of troubled teens in our large secondary schools. I call these dual-role educators " angel teachers." I have found angel teachers in almost every secodary school I observed as a teacher trainer, student assistsnce counselor, and writer/observer of secondary school life.

Angel teachers carry out their intervention in a quiet, trusting , and private manner with little interest in their own noteriety and stardom. In fact that's why students in need are attracted to them and lineup outside their classroom door for help. Students are very savvy about where they can find an open door for help. They quickly learn through the school grapevine which teachers are the " go to" educators. Yet angel teachers fly below the radar, doing their helping work quietly. They like it that way. And in their helping role angel teachers try to protect needy students from teachers, I call them " messiah teachers." who often cross professional lines and become " too" involved , serving as a parent figure, friend, and sometimes a lover. See my book, Sexual Misconduct by Teachers and Coaches, for more information on this sensitive topic. R&L publishers, www.rowmaneducation.com.

Secondary schools can be challenging, lonely, and risky places for many teens. It can wear them down, find themselves in a slump. As Dr. Seuss suggests in " Oh, the Places You'll Go," "un-slumping yourself is not easily done. You'll will come to a place where the streets are not marked. Some windows will be lighted. But mostly they're darked. Simple it's not, I'm afraid you will find, for a mind-maker-upper to make up his mind. You are headed , I fear, towards a useless place.

Angel teachers who make themselves available for slumping students who find themselves in a useless place are at the forefront of the intervention system in our large secondary schools. Yet their helping skills and successful interventions , so valued by students , are often given little postive attention by the designated helpers in the school such as counselors, social workers, and school pyschologist. Professionals who may be reluctant to give up their helping turf for fear of losing their powerful role or even their jobs. While I understand their unease, unfortunately by circling the wagons to protect their turf these professioinals are missing the opportunity to create more open doors for help in the schools and take the lead in creating a new role for themselves in training teachers, students, parents, and even administrators as helpers. Opportunity knocks an they don't see it. They need a wake-up call!

It's time for these designated helpers to embrace and enlist angel teachers as valued colleagues and contributors. And to lead an effort to sell, encourage, and train academic teacher,who for too long have avoided helping their students with personal problems, as helpers. In today's school world we need every skilled person onboard to help troubled teens. They have too many problems and there are not enough open doors in our schools to answer their calls for help. The days of simply defining onself as an" academic" teacher should be brought to a quick close, replaced with a job role in which "every" teacher is well trained as a helper with the job expectation of intervening when they observe a student, parent, or educator headed towards the margins of school life.

We are after all, or need to be, our brother's and sister's keeper. Looking the " other way" when we see teens in trouble may come home to roost when we find ourselves as professionals in the same position. No one escapes adversity and tough times, even we as educators.

No, not every academic teacher can become a skilled angel teacher, but at the least they should be equipped with basic helping/ referral skills and willing and able to serve as first responders for teens in trouble What is required in this new role is caring and support to help teens fnd a way out of their troubles. That doesn't take a M.A. or Ph.D in counseling!A team composed of angel teachers and designated helpers can provide this kind of training intervention for teachers.

See my forthcoming book, Angel Teachers: Educators Who Care About Kids, for more information. Published by R&L Education, www.rowmaneducation.com, March, 2012.

 

Wake Up Counselors: Here's how they can restore " counseling" services for troubled teens

Secondary school counselors can restore personal and group counseling to their mission by  adopting a differentiated staffing model. In most schools counselors are assigned to students by grade and alphabetical order of surname irregardless of their counseling skills, strenghts and weaknesse. In this outdated model the counselor supposedly is able to handle " all" the needs of students on his or her list. At least that's what the  school public relation brochures state.However the reality in today's schools is " counseling" students for class placement, college admissions and financial aid, , discipline , and managing the school's mandated testing programs is the number one priority. Personal and group counseling and launching intervention programs to help the increasing number of troubled  teens takes a back seat or is not offered at all by counselors.

This is a flawed  system that has for too long left teens in need of help to  search elsewhere. Unfortunately the counselor's office in today's schools is often not a go to place for help. And it has left many counselors who are well trained in personal and group counseling stuck in a quasi-adminstrative role.  We need to free these counselors who want to be personal counselos to do what they do best and let counselors who prefer to be quasi adminisrator's free to do scheduling for classes, college admissions, disciplining, and testing . Both groups serving an important and valuable functon.

A differentiated staffing model then would assign specific counselors to  a role with the primary mission of offering personal counseling, thus creating many open doors and  clear pathways for students, parents, and staff in need of help and intervention.  A helping and intervention delivery system that would include the following elements; individual counseling, group counseling, parent counseling, training teachers as helpers and advisors, training students as peer helpers,  training support staff as helpers, creating clear pathways for referral to community health, law enforcement, mental health, religious, recreation, alchohol/drug rehabilitation agencies. And most important serving as close advisors to school administrator's regarding student well-being.

This model offers guidance and counseling programs the opportunity to stay current and be a major player in helping teens successfully navigate through  the many risks they face in today's complex world.  Assigning counselors by grade and alphabet may have worked in the large high school counseling model conceived in the 1950s, but it is now a model impeding the personal intervention services counselors now need to offer. I urge counselor leaders to hear this wake up call  not only for their students and colleagues but also for themselves and their own survival.

In closing I urge counselors to remember that the original mandate for the guidance and counseling movement in the 1950s was for both " guidance" AND "counseling." Unfortunately many counselor leaders have have overtime abandoned the " counseling " element of their mission and settled for the quasi -administrator role. The growing personal needs of students, parents, and educators in today's school community now require that " counseling" be restored. I argue that if this wake up call is ignored counselors will become dinosaurs. And we know what happened to them!

For more information regarding new models for guidance and counseling programs see my article, " Taking Inventory of Your Guidance Program," Oct. 1999 issue of Schools in the Middle, my book, Students in Trouble: schools can help before failure, pg. 90-122, Rowman & Littlefield, http://www.rowmaneducation/, com, and my new book, May, 2012, Wake Up Counselors: Restoring Counseling Services for Troubled Teens. Also by Rowman and Littlefield.

The role of guidance counselors : Losing the trust of students because of too many administrative duties

A new report by Public Agenda," Graduates Fault Advice of Guidance Counselors" states that most young adults who go to college believe that the advice of their high school guidance counselor was inadequate and often impersonal and perfuctory. Most troubling for policy makers is that young people characterized their interactions with guidance counselors' as " anonymous and unhelpful. " Nearly half of those surveyed said their counselors made them feel " like I was just anothe face in the crowd."

The researchers noted that counselors responsibilities have only grown in recent years. They also reported that advising students on higher education choice is just one of the many things that guidance counselors do. Much of their efforts is devoted to discipline issues, scheduling students for classes, overseeing the mandated testing program, and other administrstive duties. Jim Jump, a high school counselor and president of the Nationmal Association of College Admissions, said in the report that " so many other things are tossed on counselors' plates that actual counselimg takes up a very small part of the time."

One of the important conclusions of the study is young people typically give their teachers and mentors much better rating than the dismal ratings assigned to counselors. Solid majorities of young adults from diverse ethnic and racial backgrounds report they had a " teacher who really took an interest in them and encouraged them to go to college." Most say that they had a teacher or coach who " really inspired them and motivated them to do their best."

I believe there is a vicious cycle going on in our large high schools. Many administrator's are being inundated with increased responsibilities. Unfortunately they are adding more of these increased reponsibilities to the counselors' role resulting in the diminishing, even eliminating, personal counseling services for students, parents,and at-risk educators.Result? A dramatic increase in at-risk students, parents, and educators seeking help but who now find the counselors'door closed. In my experience far too many leaders in the school counseling profession, including guidance directors, have accepted this diminished role of personal counseling and not opposed or challenged their administrator's decision to make the guidance and counseling department an extension of the administration. The Public Agenda report lays bare the results.

That being said, I believe that neither the overwhlemed administrators or passive guidance directors are the primary cause of this problem. Rather they are victims, as are students, parents, and at-risk educators, of a helping system conceived in the 1950s with the advent of the Conant large high school model. A model that has been out of date since the 1970s but persists as " the " model of choice for school guidance and counseling programs. A model that is incapable of delivering the services now needed.

What is needed is a change in the way school guidance and counseling programs are organized so that personal counseling can be restored as a priority service and the quasi-administrative counseling role of student scheduling, college admissions, and mandated testing necessary to keep the school organization running smoothly are mantained. A dual role in which the role of some counselors role is to offer "personal counseling: and a quasi-administrative role for other counselors who prefer to provide "guidance" on course selection, college choice, etc. For more on " how to" reorganize counseling programs see my blog, " Wake Up Counselors:Here's how they can restore counseling services for troubled teens."

However there is some hopeful news in the Public Agenda report. New open doors are being recognized as legitimate sources of help in the school organization.For example, there are teachers who now see their role as both an academic teacher and helper for student personal problems. A dual role that is much in need in our secondary schools and needs to be expanded. The Public Agenda report quotes a student from St. Louis who said he turned to his advanced biology teacher for help because " some teachers, they care...you can just tell."

A simple but eloquent reminder of what is important for teens as they try to navigate through adolescence.This is good news for teacher advisors who want to help teens. They are increasingly being recognized as " designated helpers" for students. Maybe their time has arrived. Necessity does bring invention.And maybe it's time for guidance counselors with a mission to offer personal counseling to embrace teacher advisor's as partners in the school communities outreach to troubled students, parents, and educators. For more information on how to create shared helping opportunities between teachers advisors and counselors see my forthcoming book, Angel Teachers: Teachers Who Care About Kids. Published in March 2012 by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.

The demise of counseling services in secondary schools: Why there is a pressing need for more open doors of help for troubled teens

In many secondary schools guidance counselors are becoming quasi -administrators and being forced to abandon their personal counseling role. For example, a new state law in New Jersey, The Anti Bullying Bill of Rights, demands that beginning in September, 2011, all public schools adopt anti bullying policies, increase staff training, and adhere to tight deadlines for reporting episodes.The law requires that a school must designate an anti bullying specialists to investigate complaints and each district must have a bullying coordinator.

In most cases schools are tapping guidance counselors as the new anti bullying specialists, raising the question of whether they have the time to look into every complaint of harassment and write the detailed resports required. In my opinion one more step in the bureaucratizing of the guidance counselors' role and further distancing them from their role of counseling students.

Given this development it is critical that schools create other open doors for help such as reorganizing the assignment of counselors so there is a cadre who are designated as individual and group counselors' for students and parents, serve as trainers to ready teachers as advisors, and students as peer helpers. Many teens need intervention now and the pathways to sources of help must be easily accessible, welcoming, and trusting.

Tough calls for school administrators: Judging the fine line between what many high school, junior high, and middle school students view as " normal", albeit hostile, verbal exchanges and what some students view as sexual harassment and bullying

The role of administrators in helping teens with problems is never easy. They need help and support from many members of the school community, including counselors, teachers, coaches, students, support staff, parents, and community health, law, and social service programs, in order to provide many open doors for help. They can't get this job done on their own. There are too many students with problems and needs to be met arriving at the schoolhouse door each day.

But even when the helping resources of both the school and community are giving 100 percent there are some societal-based problems that can present a great challenge for them. Problems that outside experts and school reformers say the secondary schools have but, in my opinion, not high-priority problems for our already overburdened schools. Here's an example of the complex problems school leaders are facing.

According to New York Times reporter Jenny Anderson (07/11/2011), a national study by the National Association of University Women found widespread sexual harassment of students in grades 7 to 12. Nearly half of 7th to 12th graders experienced sexual harassment in the last school year, with 87 percent of those who had been harassed reporting negative effects such as absenteeism, poor sleep and stomachaches. Catherine Hill, the director of research at the association said, "It's pervasive, and almost a normal part of the school day." Holly Kearl, an author of the study, said "Bullying is getting a lot of attention. We don't want schools to forget about sexual harassment and not talk about it."

What's missing from this and many reports about sexual harassment and bullying in our secondary schools is that these schools are turbulent, hostile, and highly sexualized institutions. Settings with large student populations, many housing over 3000 students. Not places designed to help students form close pesonal relationships, be affirmed, given recognition, and acceptance. Many of our secondary schools are survial courses for students and are tough places for teens who are not skilled to stand their ground. They are at-risk because they lack the skills to ward off bullies and harassers who can easily spot their vulnerabilities.

Teens who are unable to defend themselves then are raw meat in a hostile school culture. Yes, there are caring administrators, counselors, teachers, coaches and support staff who daily try to protect at-risk kids. However, in some schools the ongoing, daily, demands of student troubles and conflicts can overwhelm them, particularly in urban communities.

While the school public relations announcements may state their is zero tolerance for sexual harassment and bullying, this proclamation has no real chance of succeeding. Our large secondary schools are not peaceable kingdoms and never will be. Nor will every student be a peacemaker. Suggesting these schools can be reorganized to be peaceable kingdoms is a wish, a prayer, a hope, but a denial of what these schools are really like.

Many of these schools were built and organized in the 1950s for a far different world and student/parent population. In today's world schools are facing many more complex student problems, bullying and sexual harassment being one of many. The student culture in today's schools is highly confrontational.

When Ms Hill says "it's pervasive, and almost a normal part of school life" she is right. But she has a false perception of secondary schools if she believes this is a school culture that is completely out of control and demands fixing. Her comment misses the point that the student culture of secondary schools is about surviving the daily battles and conflicts between individual students and peer groups. And it's a culture in which a major focus of student life and communication is on sex. It is a time of sexual awakening and much of the conversations between students are sexualy laden, provocative, and filld with wanted or unwanted sexual advances with words such as "you're so hot."

It's a culure in which there is a fine line between "normal," sometimes hostile, sometimes sexual, verbal exhanges between students and exchanges that can be labeled as sexual harassment and bullying. We live in tough times and many teens come to school angry with their world and the growing lack of opportunity for themselves and family members. And we live in a world that is highly sexual and many teens come to school to explore their sexuality and that exploration often begins with trial and error. And what may be seen as inappropriate sexual advances are really flirtations and a "normal" part of this process. And for students, making inappropriate , irrevent, and colorful comments are at the core of this process. Most students are not weak, defenseless and are able to deal with these uncomfortable and hostile situations. Our concern should be with those students who arrive at school as tender creatures, unable to deal with these uncomfortable and hostile conversations.

It is, as Ms. Hill decried, "a normal part of the school day." In these verbal exchanges some students will use what seems to be negative verbal labels to spar with peers. For example, casually using words such as slut, dick, homo, whore, piece of ass, built for speed, gay, so hot, shithead, fuckhead, piece of shit, ugly, wel-built, etc. Words that may appear as sexual harassment or bullying, but are in reality of school life, a normal part, for them, of the eveyday language used by teens to connect or disconnect from each other.

For students, it's all about developing communication skills that help them to be adept at dealing with uncomfortable and hostile encounters because that's what secondary school life is all about. Yes, hostile and sexual communications but not exchanges that cross the line into sexual harassment or bullying.

In the school culture of who survives and who becomes a victim, negative labels and words are the centerpiece of school life. No, for many outsiders such as school reformers and sexual harassment bullying experts, it is not a fair, peaceful, kind, accepting, or gentle use of dialogue. They envision a school world in which students are quiet, civilized, helpful and kind to each other, never rude or hostile, and sexually laden conversations are absent.

However, for many students it's "their" language and way of communicating. Inappropriate comments are championed. It's the law of the jungle in the school culture. Be prepared to battle and defend oneself or be victimized.

As adults the behaviors we may want for students are often not the behaviors students want for themselves. However, there is great adult pressure to get school leaders to create a wholly unhostile and sexually absent environment. This is a no-win situation for administrators who must walk a fine line between hearing critics who are calling for zero tolernace for sexual harassment and bullying and standing up for a school culture in which "normal" vebal exchanges between students are part of their world and do not cross the line into sexual harassment and bullying. Administrators who have the responsiblity for making the "right" judgement call in sexual harassment and bullying cases are presented with a fine, gray, line to navigate through.

These administrators have enough on their hands without the pressure to make their school environment unhostile, peaceful, and without sexual overtones. Many of their schools are overcrowded with outdated facilities, serving diverse student groups who are often in conflict with each other, and staff working in an environment in which student problems are always on the increase. There is no respite for them and few rewards. They're in a war that seems to never end. Adding proposals to their to do list to make their schools peaceable kingdoms seems so removed from the reality they face each day as to border on the absurd.

Instead I argue that the response to the charge of critics that there is an increase of sexual harassment and bullying in our large secondary schools, begins at home. Children need to learn early on to face and handle conflct succesfully, not turn the other cheek, stand their ground, and do battle on the playground when they are called names, pushed around, and isolated. They need to learn how to compete in the world not just academically but socially as well, knowing their own strenghts and weaknesses, learning to deal with failure, and finding their own special niche.

Parents who raise their children to be nice, quiet, peace loving, safe, to avoid conflict and like everyone, finding some good in them as the saying goes, are doing them no favor. These children are being raised without the skills to face conflct when it comes their way and it will when they enter middle school, junior high, and high school. They are raw meat and no school interventon program, albeit with good intentions, will save and help them avoid the conflicts that are waiting for them.

I say: parents teach your children the skills they will need in" their" life, not the life you are planning for them, inadvertently making them a victim. Schools can do their best to offer support for students who are raised in families like this by providing many open doors for help –– support groups, teacher advisors, individual counseling, etc. But in the end what is needed is an increased effort by parents to raise resilient children who can stand on their own. I believe to think that school leaders can do or should do more to make their schools peaceable kingdoms and their students peacemakers is is an unrealalistic goal in today's complex school world with its many demands. Instead let's give them credit for the help they are offering many troubled teens and not ask them to take on solving problems that are societal-based and not a prioity in our schools.

Philosophy

Dr. Wiliam Fibkins philosophy rests on the notion that there is an urgent need to empower every member of the school community to intervene when they observe a community member headed for trouble and the margins of school life—an approach that requires administrators, counselors and student service professionals, teachers, students, support staff, and parents to be well trained to intervene.

It is a given in school life that every community member can face tough times and failure in both their home and school lives. Tough times that can provide major barriers to their success unless quick, thoughtful, and trusting intervention is easily available. Dr. Fibkins believes each member of the school can develop the skills, capacity, and will to become their brother’s and sister’s keeper, therefore not allowing "one" member to fall through the cracks.

His workshops, training programs, and conference presentations provide a rationale and "how to" approach for expanding the helping resources of each special group in the school so they can contribute to the well being of the school population; administrators, counselors and student service professionals, teachers, students, support staff, and parents.

Successful, caring, and welcoming schools are an essential part of building a culture that prides itself on helping each person be all they can be and making dreams become realities. Dr. Fibkins believes that to accomplish this goal we need to get everyone on board in the schools to encourage and support member’s dreams and hopes and allow opportunity to flourish and be nurtured.

He argues that no one special group can successfully respond to the academic, social, health and well being needs of every member of the school community. However Dr. Fibkins believes an intervention program with the mission of creating a community of helpers to provide outreach and support that is easily accessible to each person can dramatically reduce problems such as student failure, teacher ineffectiveness, parent child abuse, non-involvement of support staff, lack of personal counseling offered by guidance counselors, and administrator burnout.

It's a win-win situation for schools, many who now see their interventions systems overwhelmed by the growing personal and school problems of students, parents, and school staff, each group’s issues contributing to an overall negative school climate that endures without an expanded intervention process.