I Stood Up for A Lander Friend: How a Button is Changing a Mindset

At every school, there are bullies and there are victims. But what about the kids who witness the bullying? What's their role?

At , counselor Rebecca Schmidt is targeting the bystanders and teaching them what to do in a bullying situation. She's been with the district for 19 years, and helped start the program on Sept. 1.

"In guidance lessons, I have 100 kids. I'll have two kids come to the front and role play bully and victim," Schmidt explained. "I have everyone else in the room stand up and I say 'All of you can stop this. All of you are the bystanders and you can decide that at Lander, bullying is not going to happen.'"

The kids are taught to politely intervene in the situation by asking the victim to come play with them or to ask the bully not to treat their friend that way.

"When someone stands up for someone else, I stand in the hall and they (bystander and victim) come up to me and tell me what they did to stand up for them," Schmidt said. "They bring their hero with them and they fill out a hero paper."

The bystander is then awarded a button that says, "I stood up for a Lander friend. Ask me what I did." Then any time a teacher sees a child with a button, he or she stops to ask what happened. The hero's name is also read over the afternoon announcements.

"(The program) also gives me an idea of what's going on on the playground," Schmidt said. "I'm finding out information, too, about what really is happening."

Schmidt added the school didn't have much bullying before the program because once it happened, school administrators immediately put a stop to it. In bullying cases where a child is physically hurt, the bully has to report directly to the principal for discipline.

Schmidt has already given out more than 125 buttons, and two children have eight buttons, which is the most any student has earned.

"Now the kids are looking for things to stand up for, which is great," Schmidt said. "Kids bug other kids, but my thing is I want the kids to know there's a safe place to go and they need to be aware of it.

"It's not OK to be disrespected and teased," Schmidt continued. "I want bullying to be a foreign thing to them and I want them to think 'Why in the world would you be treating someone so badly?'"