Counselor Newsletter for October
It's October already and school is in full swing. Our Pyle Panthers are busy learning and growing.
We were able to visit many of our classrooms to do lessons on Coping Skills with great success. We look forward to seeing our Panthers using these tools they've learned in their day-to-day both here at school as well as at home.
We also commemorated You Matter Day with a Spirit Day on Friday, September 22nd. You Matter Day is a day we commemorate each year to let the students know that they are an important part of our Ernie Pyle community. We hope by commemorating this day that the students are able to feel a sense of belonging and acceptance in our community.
The students were also able to celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month through lunch bunch art activities, Spanish-language music during their lunch recess and morning assemblies, and a fun school-wide contest where they earned a free dress pass.
Finally, we promoted September's Attendance Awareness Month on campus as well as to our families. We recognize that absences are inevitable due to illness or unforeseen circumstances, but we are encouraging families to contact the office at (562) 804-6528. We also have this handy QR code that you can scan that takes you to a Google Form that you can fill out to report an absence:
Did you know that nationwide 90% of students in grades 4-8 report having been harassed or bullied? Were you aware that over 160,000 kids refuse to go to school each day for fear of being bullied? Did you know that 64% of students who are bullied do not report it? Bullying is unwanted, aggressive behavior among school aged children that involves a real or perceived power imbalance. The behavior is repeated, or has the potential to be repeated, over time. Both kids who are bullied and who bully others may have serious, lasting problems.
In order to be considered bullying, the behavior must be aggressive and include:
An Imbalance of Power: Kids who bully use their power—such as physical strength, access to embarrassing information, or popularity—to control or harm others. Power imbalances can change over time and in different situations, even if they involve the same people.
Repetition: Bullying behaviors happen more than once or have the potential to happen more than once.
Bullying includes actions such as REPEATEDLY making threats, spreading rumors, attacking someone physically or verbally, and excluding someone from a group on purpose.
This month, the counselors will be going into classrooms to discuss with students how to identify bullying and things they can do to deal with it both if it happens to them or if they witness it being done to someone else.
