“If it’s not fun for everyone, then it’s not actual fun.” When schoolyard banter crosses into harassment and bullying, what can we do to keep our kids safe at school? This week In the Den, Jen and special guest Dr. Roni Jo Draper discuss how to recognize and respond to bullying whether our child is being bullied or has become a bully within the public school system.
Special Guest: Roni Jo Draper
Roni Jo Draper, Ph.D. (Yurok|she.her) is an educator, storyteller, filmmaker, and activist. Roni began her career as a high school mathematics and science teacher where she worked primarily with children at risk of not completing high school. She is professor emeritus from Brigham Young University where she taught courses in literacy education, multicultural education, and global women’s studies. She is currently on a one-year appointment at Utah Valley University where she teaches courses in multicultural education and classroom management. Her educational scholarship has appeared in several books, educational research journals, and professional journals for teachers. In her recent work she has turned to Indigenous storytelling and other art forms to share stories that center the lives of Indigenous peoples. She produced the film Scenes from the Glittering World, about the in- and out-of-school lives of three Navajo young people attending a remote high school on the Navajo Nation, which is available to view on PBS. Roni Jo is also the writer, producer, and director of the documentary short film Fire Tender, which centers the lives of Yurok fire practitioners as they return cultural fire to heal land. Fire Tender will air on PBS in April in conjunction with their Earth Day celebrations. Additionally, Roni works as an advocate for social justice in her community. She has served as the chair of the board of the ACLU of Utah, a member of the national board of the ACLU, the Vice-President of the board of PFLAG Provo/Utah County, a member of the board of Provo Pride, and as a founding board member of Encircle.
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“If it’s not fun for everyone, then it’s not actual fun.” When schoolyard banter crosses into harassment and bullying, what can we do to keep our kids safe at school? This week In the Den, Jen and special guest Dr. Roni Jo Draper discuss how to recognize and respond to bullying whether our child is being bullied or has become a bully within the public school system.
Special Guest: Roni Jo Draper
Roni Jo Draper, Ph.D. (Yurok|she.her) is an educator, storyteller, filmmaker, and activist. Roni began her career as a high school mathematics and science teacher where she worked primarily with children at risk of not completing high school. She is professor emeritus from Brigham Young University where she taught courses in literacy education, multicultural education, and global women’s studies. She is currently on a one-year appointment at Utah Valley University where she teaches courses in multicultural education and classroom management. Her educational scholarship has appeared in several books, educational research journals, and professional journals for teachers. In her recent work she has turned to Indigenous storytelling and other art forms to share stories that center the lives of Indigenous peoples. She produced the film Scenes from the Glittering World, about the in- and out-of-school lives of three Navajo young people attending a remote high school on the Navajo Nation, which is available to view on PBS. Roni Jo is also the writer, producer, and director of the documentary short film Fire Tender, which centers the lives of Yurok fire practitioners as they return cultural fire to heal land. Fire Tender will air on PBS in April in conjunction with their Earth Day celebrations. Additionally, Roni works as an advocate for social justice in her community. She has served as the chair of the board of the ACLU of Utah, a member of the national board of the ACLU, the Vice-President of the board of PFLAG Provo/Utah County, a member of the board of Provo Pride, and as a founding board member of Encircle.
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JEN: Hello and welcome. You are listening to In The Den with Mama Dragons. I’m your host, Jen. This podcast was created to walk and talk with you through the journey of raising happy, healthy, and productive LGBTQ humans. Thanks for listening. We’re glad you’re here.
Most of us send our kids to school. Most of us assume they will make friends and find joy and love their teacher and learn all sorts of things. Most of us trust that it will go well. But bullying can become a real issue for a lot of kids. And parents are often at a loss for what their options are if the schools are not addressing it adequately. Sometimes I think we worry as parents that we are overreacting or we don’t want to make things worse or maybe even that we don’t want to be “that parent.”
Today, we are going to talk about all things in the realm of school bullying and harassment and the options that are available to get it all sorted out within the public school system. And hopefully a lot of these ideas might carry over into other areas where some kids are targeted. Again, we have been lucky enough to find an expert who is willing to come and talk to us about this topic and help us navigate through it.
Roni Jo Draper, Ph.D. is an enrolled member of the Yurok Tribe. She is an educator, storyteller, filmmaker, and activist. Roni began her career as a high school mathematics and science teacher where she worked primarily with children at risk of not completing high school. She is a professor emeritus from Brigham Young University where she taught courses in literary education, multicultural education, and global women’s studies. She is currently on a one-year appointment at Utah Valley University where she teaches courses in multicultural education and classroom management.
Her educational scholarship has appeared in several books, educational research journals, and professional journals for teachers. In her recent work she has turned to Indigenous storytelling and other art forms to share stories that center the lives of Indigenous peoples. She produced the film “Scenes from the Glittering World,” about the in- and out-of-school lives of three Navajo young people attending a remote high school on the Navajo Nation, which is available to view on PBS. Roni Jo is also the writer, producer, and director of the documentary short film “Fire Tender,” which centers the lives of Yurok fire practitioners as they return cultural fire to heal land. “Fire Tender” will air on PBS in April in conjunction with their Earth Day celebrations.
Additionally, Roni works as an advocate for social justice in her community. She has served as the chair of the board of the ACLU of Utah, a member of the national board of the ACLU, and the Vice-President of the board of PFLAG Provo/Utah County, a member of the board of Provo Pride, and as a founding board member of Encircle.
Clearly Roni Jo knows her stuff and is an amazing person. Welcome Roni Jo! I am so excited that you came here to help us with this!
RONI JO: Thank you. I’m so happy to be in this conversation with you.
JEN: Can we start by identifying when a situation is harmful and bullying, and when it is just regular banter or teasing between kids?
RONI JO: it really moves into bullying when a kid feels targeted, when a kid feels the bullying. I’ve got three sons. And we do a lot of banter in the Draper house. I tell people it’s a little bit like growing up in a fraternity house. When my daughter-in-laws came into the family, sometimes they were uncomfortable because they thought my kids were bullying me. But that was just banter. I was holding my own and it was fun back-and-forth. If it had gotten to the point where it wasn’t fun for me, where I was getting my feelings hurt and I was being bothered by that, then it would move into bullying. So that can be one of the tricky things about bullying is that it’s not always just about what happens. It’s about how it is affecting those involved in the activity.
JEN: I like the way you phrased that idea of “Fun for everyone.” We talked about that with my kids sometimes when they were little and it would start to go a little bit too far. And they would say things like, “It’s just fun.” Or “I’m just having fun.” Or, “It’s just funny.” And we would say, “If it’s not fun for everyone, then it’s not fun.”
RONI JO: Right. And I’ve said to my children, my grandchildren, “It doesn’t look like so-and-so is having fun. We’re stopping now. We’re done with it.”
JEN: So, as a parent, maybe your child doesn’t even know that they’re bullying. Maybe they genuinely think it’s fun. And so when you hear that your child’s acting as the bully, you can educate them a little bit without becoming defensive. Your kid might be intentionally innocent and still causing harm. And we can adjust those kinds of things.
RONI JO: And I always think, regardless, if your child is involved in bullying, either as the bully or the bullied, both of those children need attention somehow. Both of those children are children who need to be supported somehow. We often, of course and rightly so, understand that the child who’s being bullied needs help. But the child who’s bullying also needs help because sometimes they don’t know that what they’re doing that’s harmful or they’re repeating things they’ve heard elsewhere and they don’t know that it’s a problem. And sometimes they do know that it’s harmful but they’ve got some maybe social needs that aren’t being met and those need to be addressed. And so, I don’t know if at some point we’re going to talk about this, but just punishing a bully often isn’t really effective for helping them become someone who doesn’t bully.
JEN: So, sometimes we hear things from people, right, if our child’s the one being bullied, “Just leave it alone. Let the kids work it out. It’ll toughen them up.” All of those sort of ideas, but do we know what really happens when bullying is ignored?
RONI JO: You know, I’m not super familiar with that research. I don’t have it really on the top of my head. But there are times when we want to just ignore behaviors. Obviously, sometimes ignoring the behavior and not giving it any heat is a way for a behavior to go away. But if it’s gotten to the point where your child is complaining about it, then they’re being affected and it needs to be addressed. And so just hoping it’s going to go away, probably isn’t the advice to give, partly because a lot of kids, by the time they tell an adult that they’re being bullied, they’ve already been ignoring it. And now they’re looking for an adult to help them problem-solve and to address the situation.
JEN: That makes a lot of sense to me. I don’t want this to land anywhere in the realm of victim blaming.
RONI JO: Sure.
JEN: But are there certain characteristics or personality types that are more likely to become the victims of bullying?
RONI JO: I mean, sure. We can think about folks who can appear as easy targets, that if someone is just a hard-core bullier, they’re not going to go for somebody who’s going to stand up for themselves or maybe is in social groups at school that have high status or whatever. So there’s certainly those sorts of things that happen. But, again, I don’t think it makes sense to teach kids, “Hey, let’s not be a target.” I don’t like that because that is victim blaming and in some ways it’s suggesting for kids to be someone other than they are. I know that in my work with schools and also with parents, giving advice to parents, I’ve had parents say, “My kid has reported that they’re being bullied because they’ve come out as gay,” or maybe just the way that they move in the world has sort of presented them as a target and that they’ve gone to the school administration and the principal has said, “Well if you would act less gay, you wouldn’t be bullied.” That is not the right answer. Your kid gets to act as gay as they’d like to act. They get to be their total selves and not be the target of harassment or violence. And so, we may want to help a child learn some strategies for how to stand up to a bully in ways that won’t invite additional harassment or violence. But we wouldn’t want to say to a kid, “Maybe you shouldn’t wear that nail polish or maybe if you grew your hair out.” I think that’s just not the right way to go.
JEN: And what I was thinking, and you kind of hit on it. But I want to ask it a teeny bit differently. I was thinking, we know that LGBTQ kids, statistically, are more likely to be bullied. Is that true of other minority groups, like racial minorities in a school?
RONI JO: Yes. Racial minorities are likely to be bullied, especially maybe because they have different kinds of lunches and their lunches smell or look different than the majority of kids. So they become a target for bullying. Or their hair is done differently. Kids who maybe have visible or even invisible disabilities are often victims of bullying or targets of bullying because of the thickness of their glasses or because they use a walker or they have hearing aids or a cochlear implant or something like that, that would cause them to be different enough to be seen as someone who might be easy to bully.
JEN: And I was just thinking, based on what you were saying before about the LGBTQ kids and I’m thinking about this. Nobody’s going to tell a kid, “Well, if you’d stop being black, that would really, really help things.”
RONI JO: Right. If you would straighten your hair.
JEN: But we do, do that sometimes with LGBTQ kids.
RONI JO: Yeah. If you could just come to school without your thick glasses on, no one would give you a hard time. True that. But then I wouldn’t be able to see.
JEN: So that’s a problem.
RONI JO: Yeah.
JEN: Are there certain characteristics or personality types that are more likely to become the bullies? So, if it’s our kid we can be making sure we’re super aware.
RONI JO: There are a variety of reasons. But sometimes, kids who are bullies are maybe in situations where they’re not having a lot of power in their lives.
JEN: OK.
RONI JO: And so, if I’m a kid and I’m maybe living in a really unstable household, maybe we’ve got food insecurity, housing insecurity, maybe my parents are going through a tough time and I’m not getting the same kind of attention or I feel powerless in some of the situations that are going around me, then I might find a way to assert power at school in terms of bullying somebody.
JEN: That makes sense.
RONI JO: That’s where I say, the bully is often somebody who is also very much in need of social support.
JEN: That makes a ton of sense. It almost speaks to this idea of a power imbalance. A bully is always going to have a little bit more social power or physical power than the victim and maybe that’s the only space they have more power.
RONI JO: Right. And they may be backed up by some friends who are maybe in some similar situations or they maybe want to sort of gather or get some sort of cachet in order to be seen as capable by other friends. But the challenge is, especially if we’re talking about young children in elementary school, they may be doing all these things and not be aware of it. It’s not like a fifth grader who is bullying or a third grader who is bullying. It’s like, “I’m experiencing some really stressful or difficult situations in my home life and so I’m going to assert some power here.” They’re not actually aware of that. Or they’re not saying, “I really want to get in good with Frank. So I bet if I show that I can pick on so-and-so, Frank’s going to totally want to hang with me on the playground.” They’re generally not aware of those kinds of things, and certainly wouldn’t be able to put language to it like that. So we’ve got to be aware of that. A lot of this can be really narrowed down to trying to address the fears. What is the fear that the bully is living with? What is that fear? Is the fear that people won’t think that they’re masculine enough, so now I’ve got to do something that appears very aggressive, so that I can appear to my peers as masculine. Or maybe they’ve got fears that they’re not smart or they’re not clever. And so they’ve got to say words, pick on somebody in a way that demonstrates that they’re super clever with the words. So it’s unclear. There’s not one path to becoming a bully. And we’re talking about kids. At some point maybe we’ll talk about teachers who like to bully.
JEN: We have a whole section on that.
RONI JO: They’re dealing with a whole different reason why they may be stepping up to that.
JEN: So let’s start with the moment a parent learns their child’s being bullied. Maybe their kid told them or maybe the neighbor kid told their parents who told them. And whatever the case may be, obviously, I think we all know, your first step is going to be love on that kid and comfort that kid and make sure they know that you value them. But what comes next? What’s the next step?
RONI JO: I think asking that kid a lot of questions. Because, as a parent or a guardian, you’re going to want to for sure love on them or whatever. But you may be dealing with your own feelings of frustration, fear, anger, and you’re not exactly aware yet of what are the feelings that your child is having. So you understand what happened, “Can you tell me what happened? What led up to it? Can you tell me how you felt about it? Can you tell me what you did about it? Can you tell me…” So that we can get as much information as we can. And sometimes a kid maybe doesn’t want to talk about it too much because maybe they’re embarrassed or they think that maybe they should’ve done more to ward off the bullying or to avoid the situation. Again, we see this in all kinds of places where people are victims of any kind of harassment where the person may be dealing with their own guilt for not knowing what to say, for not dealing with it properly, for getting themselves in a situation perhaps. And so we’ve got to really talk with the kid to find out what exactly are they experiencing, what are their feelings. And then talk about, “So what can we do about it?” And do some brainstorming with a kid to figure that out. I think that, for the most part, kids ought not to have to solve this problem on their own. They need adults to help them figure this out. But there are better and worse ways for parents to go about it.
JEN: And after this brainstorming session, then what do you do? Do you march over to the other parent’s house, knock on the door?
RONI JO: It depends on the relationship you have with the other parents. Because maybe as a parent, maybe you do know that family. Maybe that’s someone, maybe they’ve got older siblings and your kids have played with those kids before. Or the person lives on your street. If you’ve got a relationship with the parent, you can say, “Hey. We need to talk. This is going on.” If you don’t have a relationship with the parent, I wouldn’t call the parent but I would call the school and find out – the school might not even be aware that it's happening, that the bullying happens on the school bus or it happens on sort of hidden areas in the school building or on the playground where maybe all of that has taken place outside of the eye of a teacher or an administrator. So they might not be aware of it. So, again, this is a place for us to go in with a lot of questions. “Are you aware? My son – or my child, my daughter, my kid – has told me about this. Are you aware of this? If so, what are you doing about it?” And so just be in an information gathering kind of a deal from that beginning.
JEN: So, you’ve talked to the principal and the principal tells you, “That’s just how kids are. You’re overreacting. Kids will be kids. Boys will be boys.” What’s your next step?
RONI JO: My next step is to find out what the anti-bullying policies are in school.
JEN: Is that different by state? Are those state rules or district rules or school rules?
RONI JO: They’re district rules. Sometimes it might be particular to a school. They’re usually district or state rules. And find out how they’re going to carry those out. One of the challenges in schools is they will have anti-bullying training. They do that teachers. They do that for the whole school, talk about bullying. But often, we don’t go into the specifics of what bullying looks like. So kids can go through a whole anti-bullying training and go “Yeah, totally. Bullying, that’s bad.” And then turn around a bully because they haven’t assumed that anything that’s being said there applies to the way they’re interacting with other kids. And so, if the anti-bullying training doesn’t get into specifics about what does bullying look like that’s race-based bullying? What does sexuality or gender-based bullying look like? What does bullying look like that’s targeting children with disabilities? If we don’t get into those specifics, then sometimes even teachers may not be aware that it’s bullying, either. So then a good question to ask the administrator is, “With your anti-bullying training or policies, what are the specifics? What is it that you’re actually looking for?” So that you could understand the situation. I think that sometimes, if your child is LGBTQ and they’re being targeted for bullying based on their sexuality or their perceived sexuality or based on their gender, then we can turn to Title IX. And I find then it’s useful in talking with an administrator who maybe doesn’t want to take you seriously, to say, “I think this is a Title IX violation.” Which is the federal guidelines to ensure that there is gender equity in school. It should prompt a different kind of response because there are federal guidelines that support maintaining equity for people of all genders and sexualities.
JEN: Sometimes I think you have these teachers or administrators – and my heart is with them all and they’re exhausted – And you’re bringing this eighth grade conflict and putting it on their lap and they’re like, “Okay, can we just let it go?” But, if you’re talking about Title IX, you’re talking about legal action and that’s actually a bigger burden. So ignoring it no longer becomes the easy way out. Addressing it becomes the easy way out.
RONI JO: Right. And every school has assigned to it at least one counselor. In elementary school, sometimes that counselor doesn’t work at that school full-time. A school counselor might have a couple of schools that they work with. But they work with – again now we’re talking about school counselors, talk about people who are overburdened as well – but that could be something that you could ask for. Say, “Hey. Do you have a school counselor? Is your school counselor prepared to maybe facilitate some conversations and do some intervening so that the child who is bullying is getting the proper care and that my child is also getting proper care so that we can really get back to doing things like learning math or world history, whatever it is.”
JEN: Feeling safe enough to get back on the school bus.
RONI JO: Right. Right.
JEN: So, this seems extreme to me but I know it’s very real. At what point do you contact law enforcement? Is that just like if your kid gets hit, you include law enforcement? Is it when it’s physical?
RONI JO: As a card-carrying member of the ACLU, I don’t love getting law enforcement involved. I don’t love getting kids involved in the criminal justice system. But if your kid has been physically or sexually assaulted, because we’re also seeing that the bullying that happens often for LGBTQ kids, really just looks like straight-up sexual harassment. If you’ve got a third-grader who is trans and then maybe a group of students corners that child in a bathroom and pulls down their pants or lifts up a skirt or something to really do their own gender check, that is sexual assault. And that, then, should be dealt with through the proper kinds of channels.
JEN: Through the legal system.
RONI JO: Yeah.
JEN: OK. I’m going to do, like, this giant pivot.
RONI JO: Gotcha.
JEN: Because I think we covered pretty well if your kid is getting bullied. The teacher, the principal, and you keep going until someone addresses it.
RONI JO: Right.
JEN: So now I’m going to pivot and you’re the teacher or the day care provider or the boy scout leader, or the parent of the bully. And you’re kind of aware that these things are happening. How can we help curb those behaviors if we’re seeing them in the kids that we’re responsible for?
RONI JO: We, literally, need to be the adult in the room. And we need to pull a kid aside if we see the kid bullying, that we need to pull that kid aside and say, “I need you to stop. I saw what happened and I need it to stop.” And if the kid says, “Well, but, I was just kidding, blah, blah, blah.” I’m like, “Hm-mm.” I’m not interested in the kid’s intent. I need it to stop. “If you want to talk to me further about it, I’d be happy to talk to you. But this behavior must stop.”
JEN: We had a situation where we were helping a boy who was getting bullied. And I was so impressed with the vice principal who called the bullies into his office. And they had all sorts of creative stories about what was happening.
RONI JO: Sure. Sure. Of course.
JEN: And he was just super direct and said, “I’m not an idiot.”
RONI JO: Right.
JEN: And I love that he went to the mat so quickly to protect the kid who didn’t feel safe at school because sometimes it is easy to be like, “You’re a good kid. I like you all. So it’s too difficult for me to believe that you could do something mean.”
RONI JO: Right. Like, “I’ve known so-and-so. I had their big sister in class last year. I know their parents. Their mother’s the president of the PTA or whatever. They would never.” And this is, again, another case where we trust the victim, believe the victim. And then move forward. And I’ve been in conversations with students where I’ve said, “Okay. I need that to stop.” And then they say, “Well, I didn’t even do anything.” “Well, that’s great then we’re having a preventative conversation where you’re never going to do that thing in the future as well.” I guess in that moment, I’m not looking for facts. I’m looking for the behavior to stop. And so if it’s happening, it’s tricky for teachers because it can be difficult to know how to deal with a situation if it’s happening in front of a whole class. I’ve got 25 students in class, someone’s being harassed; in that moment, it may be saying something out loud in front of the whole class brings undue attention to both the kid who’s bullying and the kid who’s being bullied. So then I might not want to do that. It may be enough for me to move my body over there and have that stop. Or maybe just say to the person who is being the bully, “Hey, why don’t you come sit over here for a minute.” And just try to do that in a way that the whole class doesn’t notice what’s going on. And then keep that kid later and say, “I saw what went down and I’m not having it.” Then work through things.
There are a lot of schools that are using a restorative justice approach to dealing with behaviors, especially like bullying. And those have been very useful ways of sitting kids down and having them have a conversation with one another. So, if the person who’s being the bully can hear from the bullied, “This is what happened. This is how I felt. And I didn’t like it.” And they can come to some sort of agreement, that’s always a facilitated conversation either with the teacher, the school counselor, or a school administrator. And it’s done with the permission and consent of the person that’s being bullied so that you don’t force them to have to confront their bully.
JEN: And share their vulnerabilities.
RONI JO: Right. But often that can be a very useful way of dealing with a situation. But that’s again, that’s something that, as a parent, you can talk with the teacher, the administrator, the school counselor and say, “How are we going to proceed? How are we going to do this? And how are we going to do this so that both of the individuals can feel love and feel supported?”
JEN: So how are the rules different or the motions forward different if the bullying is happening outside of school hours, especially in the world of cyber-bullying.
RONI JO: Right. It’s a little bit more tricky.
JEN: Are the schools like, “Whew, it happened at 6:00 at night, not my problem.”
RONI JO: “That was on Instagram, that’s not our jurisdiction.” That makes it a little bit more difficult. Although, schools are aware of that challenge. And usually, if a parent comes in and says, “Hey, my kid is being targeted in these kinds of ways over social media,” they, I think, for the most part, schools have protocols for how to go about dealing with that. You, as a parent, may have to do some things in terms of helping your kid. And I think this is a good place, too, for parents to have conversation with their kids and talk about, “This is what online harassment looks like and I don’t want you to be a perpetrator of it.” And, again, get down to the nitty gritty because a lot of kids maybe are participating in things and they don’t know that they’re being a bully. They don’t know that they’re engaging in harassment. And so they need to be educated.
JEN: That reminds me of, in high school, a friend of mine was just tormented by this guy, who was this popular, tall, athletic, wealthy basketball player. And he was just mean to her.
RONI JO: Sure.
JEN: And she hated going to this class that he was in. And I learned about it. And I went up to him and said, “Why are you so mean to her?” And he full on, did not know. I was like, “I’m not mean to her. I think she’s super cool.” And I was like, “You’re mean to her and it’s gross.” And he was shocked. He was shocked that it was hurting her feelings. And it totally stopped because he wasn’t a mean kid. He wasn’t trying to be mean. He was just really, really, really bad at flirting.
RONI JO: yes. People just can’t do it. And I think that’s the thing. Kids need to be educated. And, again, the kid, who you’re describing, you could’ve had anti-bullying conversations. But because maybe there wasn’t an example of the exact kind of words, the way he was saying it to your friend, then he didn’t see himself as a bully. He’s like, “Yeah. Bullies. We should get rid of them. They should stop it.” And they’re not seeing that they’re engaging in those kinds of behaviors. For sure, like in that situation that you’re describing, we would – I mean, I don’t know the nature of what he was saying. But if your friend, let’s say, stops going to that particular class or maybe drops a class because she doesn’t want to be in the same room with him, then that would bump up to the level of sexual harassment where it’s interfering.
JEN: Even if it wasn’t related at all, like, it was about how short she was.
RONI JO: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Because it’s about her body and it’s targeting her as a female. And then, if it interfered with her ability to participate in school and have access to education, that’s a Title IX violation.
JEN: Okay. All right. So, we have a big chunk of time left and I left it that way on purpose. But I don’t have any predictions about how this part’s going to go.
RONI JO: Okay.
JEN: I think it’s a phenomenon that’s relatively new to me. I’m a teacher by degree, and by nature, and so in my head, every teacher is totally aware of all the research and is protecting the kids first. That’s the priority. But, more and more and more, I’m seeing examples of situations where the teacher or the principal or the district school board, or the state legislature are the ones creating these situations that are bullying kids and making school unsafe. So let’s flip a little bit. You can’t really go talk to the teacher about it if the teacher’s the bully and they already hate you and your kid. So, how are we doing it differently? Start with a teacher.
RONI JO: So let’s say you’ve got a teacher and they’re maybe refusing to use your kids pronouns or they are giving your kid a hard time because your kid is gay or bisexual and has asked a same-sex partner to a dance. And then the teacher says things that are kind of bullying. You know, they’re actually bullying. Then you can address that with the teacher because, again, the teacher may be thinking, “Oh, I’m just teasing. I don’t know, whatever.”
JEN: “I’m so funny.”
RONI JO: “It’s so funny to tease kids about who they’re dating because they’re not self-conscious about stuff.” So, you may say, “You know, you maybe didn’t realize, but when you’re saying these things, my child is very uncomfortable.” And a lot of times a teacher, because you’re right, for the most part, teachers, they go into this business because they really care about kids. And that that may be enough for them to say, “Oh, my gosh, I’m so sorry. I had no idea.” And they’ll apologize. They’ll figure out how to make things right. If that doesn’t happen, for sure go to the administrator. And say, “I’ve talked to the teacher and now this is going on. It’s continued to go on or the teacher says ‘I’m not into pronouns.’ Because what, you don't speak the English language?” or whatever it is. Then to say to the principal, “I need you to intervene.”
JEN: So what if the teacher is sort of bullying your kid, but they’re almost required to. “We’re all using the pronouns of the birth certificate.” I know we don’t have pronouns on our birth certificate, but the pronouns of the birth certificate.
RONI JO: Right. Right. Or I spoke with an administrator a while back who said, “Well, we’re just banning nicknames.” Banning nicknames? How are you going to do that? I’ve got a son named Quinlin, he goes by Quin. Are you going to ban that? Are you going to have all the teachers have to call him Quinlin? I mean, that’s fine. That’s his name. But that seems a bit extreme. And he was like, “Oh, I guess you wouldn’t do that.” I said, “Right. So this feels like you’re targeting trans kids.” The teachers I talk to, I love, love, love them because most of them are like, “When I shut that door in my classroom, I get to call the kids the names they want to be called.” And I know they're taking a big legal risk, I suppose. But that’s coolio with me. If the parent has gone in and requested a name change or saying, “My child will be called by this name.” Even in states that have weird laws around transgender students, the school has to accommodate that. The challenge is really with kids who are using a different name and their parents don’t know because maybe their parents aren’t supportive of that.
JEN: And sometimes kids have to experiment for a bit. But, we’re talking about what parents can do. And my heart just hurts for the kids who are getting bullied and can’t get their parents to stand up for them because they can’t even tell their parents. I substitute teach a lot. And it’s really easy to find the teachers who have sort of figured it out.
RONI JO: They’ve figured out work arounds.
JEN: Certain teachers who, they’re writing the name they want you to use on a separate sheet of paper other than the attendance, other than just leaving you to do it badly or crazy. I can see, I’m in a very conservative area and I can see the teachers coming up with creative ways to let those kids know that they’re loved without losing their job by being too obvious. But it feels sometimes like the systems are kind of protecting the teachers who are not doing that.
RONI JO: Right, they are. And part of what’s happening is that the folks in the states where we see this happening, Florida, Texas, Idaho, Utah, you know, that the people who are pushing through this legislation are the minority, or in the minority for the most part, even in very conservative states. The voters are like, “I don’t care what a kid’s called during algebra.” But it’s a very small minority of very vocal people who are pushing these kinds of laws forward. And they’re so organized. They’re super highly organized as parent groups or whatever. I would like to see parents of queer kids get as organized and showing up to school board meetings and doing all those sorts of things. The other thing is, and I think this is particularly true of the folks who I know are members of Mama Dragons is that group, they’re overwhelmingly white.
JEN: Yes. We would like to address that.
RONI JO: Of course. And white folks have been remaining silent on things like CRT, DEI Diversity Equity Inclusion. They’re remaining quiet because they don’t think that pertains to them. But it pertains to our queer loved ones. And so we need to get vocal. I believe that what we’re seeing in terms of folks saying, “Well, this is the gender on your birth certificate because a doctor looked at your genitals for half a second, and now that has determined your pronouns.” Or, as a mom, you put a child’s name down and the child grows up and is like, “I’m not really into that name. I want a different name.” That all of that is also it springs from and can be connected to white supremacy. And if we will do the work of standing up against white supremacy, that includes this kind of sexual harassment, heterosexism, transphobia, homophobia, all those sorts of things. But we often aren’t super active on that. Or we’re like, we maybe decide that maybe we’re afraid to vote for a democrat, so we get someone who maybe is republican, who maybe we like that idea. But maybe they’re a super conservative republican and do some other kinds of things and then we’re like, “Oh, I don’t know if I like that.” And so we’re not maybe looking at the whole picture of what a particular candidate might do. And that’s certainly not to say – democrats can pass crummy laws just as easy as republicans. Neither of the parties have cornered the market on how to be cruel to LGBTQ kids in schools.
JEN: For me with this fighting, like stand up and fight and we need to fight back. I feel like I’m cheering. As you're talking, I agree with everything you’re saying. And also, it feels so unbalanced because if I’m championing a library book removal because I want to “protect the children,” I get to just talk about all kids. And I can make up whatever things I want. But there’s nobody who’s going to attack me or my children for being righteous, or self-righteous as the case may be.
RONI JO: Sure.
JEN: But when we’re talking about parents of queer kids and the legislation or the teachers or the administration or the other students are tormenting this kid, the louder you get, the more targeted your kid gets.
RONI JO: No. All parents of minority kids know that. It’s why often black parents don’t feel that they have the ability to go to school and say anything. What I think is interesting for white families of queer kids is this is maybe their first experience dealing with a minority situation. Whereas, folks of color, they’re expert at living in this situation and figuring some things out in terms of how to navigate. And so if you are a white person with a queer kid and you’re not involved with Black Lives Matter or you’re not involved with your Latina/Latino/Latinx neighbors in terms of fighting for rights in the school, then you can feel like you’re alone in that. But we’ve got to all show up together in solidarity.
JEN: It’s so true and we’ve mentioned a zillion times on this podcast. But for so many of us, entering the world of minority stress, is brand new. And I think that’s why we say all the time, “Look to the people who have been doing it in all these areas. If you want to know how to fight for your queer kid, go find some black moms and just listen to them.” You don’t have to annoy them. You don’t have to ask them questions. You can just watch what they’re saying and you’re going to learn a ton. Because, not only have they practiced it and know what they’re doing, but their parents practiced it.
RONI JO: Right.
JEN: And they have these generations of wisdom that we just might not have.
RONI JO: And, at the end of the day, we have more protections under Title IX for queer kids than we have for racialized minorities. Students with disabilities also have some federal protections in place. There are some protections to protect kids against racism through the Office of Civil Rights. But it’s just a little bit more difficult to manage and to work around. Kids who are being targeted because of their race, it’s often a little bit more difficult to pin down and to really identify that it’s happening and how to address it. Or for parents to be able to say, “I’ve got a 504” if your kid has disabilities, you know what that is. That’s a federal deal and you can point to it and you can get people to knock things off. Same with Title IX, if your kid’s being harassed because of their gender, their gender expression, their sexuality, their perceived sexuality, your kid doesn’t even have to be out as gay. If people are perceiving that they’re gay and they’re being targeted, that Title IX can protect them. Or we can at least point to that as a way of saying “You need to knock it off.” For folks who are being targeted because of race or maybe because they don’t speak English as their first language, or because they’re Muslim, it’s a little bit more difficult for families to get the protection that they need.
JEN: Can you tell me what sorts of things we can look at that Title IX, sexual harassment, I throw it around a lot because I know things fit into it. But what actually things are protected under Title IX. And I know that’s not consistent across time.
RONI JO: It’s not consistent and part of the things that happen, Title IX can change with executive orders from the office of the president. So, under Obama, for instance, Obama said under Title IX, trans children and trans people, trans students can have access to the bathrooms and the locker rooms that match the way that they’re doing gender. And so because of that executive order attached to Title IX, then people were like, “Well, I guess we got to make some changes.” When Donald Trump became president he, be executive order, removed that trans language in Title IX. So then schools were like, “Now what do we do? We don’t have that same ability.” And I don’t remember, maybe you know if President Biden reinstated trans protections in Title IX. I don’t remember. I should know that.
JEN: I believe that he did. But, because the states are all doing their own little states’ rights battles over the topic, that it’s largely being ignored.
RONI JO: Right.
JEN: But I think he did put the language back in. But I think that, like you were talking about, “The one way.” “The other way.” “The one way.” “The other way.” And school systems have to write policies and so I think it’s kind of a little bit being ignored.
RONI JO: Yeah. Yeah. We know that the Supreme Court has also decided that trans kids can use the restroom and locker rooms that go with their gender. Again, individual schools may be ignoring that. If that is the case and your school is doing that, I would contact your – if you’ve got some sort of state equality group like we have in Utah, Equality Utah – they can be helpful. The ACLU certainly can be helpful. The ACLU is a non-profit organization designed solely for individuals to be able to bring suit against the state and the federal government.
JEN: They’re fighting a couple of those battles out in several states right now, including my own.
RONI JO:And a lot of times, the ACLU can send a strongly worded letter to a school and that maybe is enough to get them on board. But, if they’re able, they may go ahead and file a lawsuit. Those are tricky because they can go on for a long time and sometimes a kid graduates from high school before the decision is made legally of what’s supposed to go down. But the Title IX states, obviously put in place to protect women in schools because women historically haven’t had all the same opportunities in school settings as men have had. You don’t have to go very far back in time to know that there were universities that wouldn’t allow women to attend or medical schools that wouldn't allow women to attend, law schools that wouldn’t allow women to attend. Certainly we had situations where there were all kinds of programs for male students, whether they’re athletics or other kinds of academic opportunities for male students, but women didn’t have the same opportunities. They didn’t have the same opportunities to participate in athletics or participate on the debate team or whatever. Title IX said, “Nah, We’re not doing that anymore. You have to have the same number of opportunities for women to participate in sports as you have for men to participate in sports. You have to have women at the school need to have the same opportunities as the men in schools.” So that was looking sort of institutionally, like, who gets to participate in the different programs. But then, also, when we know that people are being harassed, if they’re being sexual harassed or their being sexually assaulted, then that can impinge on a person’s ability to participate fully in school because now maybe I’m afraid to go to school or I don’t want to ride the bus or I don’t want to take that band class because that’s where my harasser is. And so Title IX says that that kind of harassment, when it rises to the level of impeding an individual's educational opportunities, then that’s a Title IX violation.
JEN: Okay.
RONI JO: And especially, and the idea is if that harassment is, if that person’s being targeted especially because of their gender or their sexual orientation, or their perceived gender or their perceived sexual orientation.
JEN: That actually makes a lot of sense. I think our listeners will kind of be able to look at situations and be like, “Wait, there’s a lot more that fits into this Title IX than I thought.”
RONI JO: At each school, there is a person who is the Title IX officer. And in the district there’s a person who’s a Title IX officer. And so that’s a way for you, if you’re not getting answers from maybe the school principal, say, “Put me in touch with the Title IX officer so I can get this sorted out.” And if that’s a district level person, I mean, often in the school the Title IX officer is the school principal. But if there’s someone at the district, you can say, “I want to talk to that person.” And lay out what’s going on and maybe file a complaint. And then that has automatic triggers that these are the things that have to happen now because someone filed this particular complaint.
JEN: I like those actionable words, “Okay. I’d like to be connected with the Title IX manager.”
RONI JO: Right.
JEN: It’s not confrontational. It’s not angry.
RONI JO: Just give me that person's number.
JEN: It’s “I will be escalating this a tiny bit here.” Awesome. So, with all of your work, and you’re teaching teachers.
RONI JO: Yes.
JEN: I guess teaching future teachers. How to deal with all these things. What are some of the common misconceptions that come up that we haven’t already addressed about bullying?
RONI JO: About bullying . . .
JEN: Or sexual harassment or any of those things.
RONI JO: Yeah. I think some of the common misconceptions are that it just has to be like sexual innuendo or that it just has to be kind of creepy language that’s being used. And maybe not realizing that’s sexual harassment. That’s what sexual harassment actually is. Sexual assault is when hands been laid on somebody. And so like that example that I was giving earlier where a child, it happened here in Utah, where a child was on the playground and they just removed the child’s pants to be able to do a gender check. That’s sexual assault. Hands were laid on the child and that’s no longer harassment. And so we need to be aware of that so we can intervene in ways that really do protect our children.
JEN: Before I let you go, is there anything else that you really, all the parents who are listening, take a minute, we probably have 5, 600 people that are listening to this episode at some point, what do you want to make sure that they understand in the realm of this topic.
RONI JO: I want them to understand that if their kid comes to them and says “This is what’s going on,” then that’s the time to take action. It’s not like, “Let’s wait and see what happens.” Because usually the child has already kind of put up with things and wants and needs some help. If you’re a teacher and a child complains, like in other situations, let’s start with believing the child. And it’s not helpful to say, “Well, I think you’re blowing it out of proportion. The same thing happened to me and I just blew it off and now I’m best friends with the person.”
JEN: “You’re so sensitive.”
RONI JO: “You’re being too sensitive.” All those things are super not helpful. And, at the end of the day, someone being bullied, you mentioned before minority stress – minority stress is going to be something that impinges on your child’s ability to learn in schools. I can’t care about how to write a five-paragraph essay if I’m being harassed or bullied. And so it’s going to impinge on their learning. It’s also maybe going to impinge on their sleep, on what they’re able to eat, how they’re able to take care of themselves. And so those might be also things to look for. Maybe your child hasn’t really said that they’re being bullied, but maybe they’re having a change in their appetite. Maybe they're doing things on purpose to make sure that they miss the bus so that you can drive them to school. But maybe their bully, they don’t want to be with the bully on the bus. Maybe you have a kid that is a super clarinet player and all the sudden, they don’t want to participate in the school orchestra. Those could be – I mean the challenge of living with young people is that sometimes those are just normal things. Just a kid being late or deciding I’m all done with the clarinet and I’m onto BMX bikes. It’s a normal thing that kids go through. But sometimes those changes are because the people that they’re meeting in those spaces are being unkind and being hurtful and harmful. And so it’s really important to say, “Tell me more about this? What’s happening?” So that you can find out really what’s at the bottom of things and then maybe intervene. If your child’s having a change in appetite, they’re all the sudden not being able to sleep, those may be signs that they’re experiencing minority stress that is being compounded by the bullying that they’re enduring during the school day. And then you’re going to want to do something about that.
JEN: This has been so helpful. I think this comes up in our groups all the time and I’m super excited to just post a link to this conversation so they can listen to your wisdom every time. Thank you so much for coming to talk to us about this and share your experience and your expertise.
RONI JO: No problem.
JEN: It’s so important that we educate our parents – all of us – so that we’re empowered to advocate for these kids, right?
RONI JO: Right. And I think it’s hard when your kid is being targeted for bullying, it’s hard to keep our cool. I mean, it is for me. They don’t call us Mama Dragons for nothing. And it’s going to be important to keep your cool because it’s probably the case that the school doesn’t really know what’s going on. They haven’t seen it. They haven’t witnessed it. Or they just don’t really know. So, go into the school assuming that the teacher, the administrators, school counselor are going to want to be helpful. And then, if they’re not helpful, then yeah, just escalate. Talk to, “Who is your supervisor? Who is this person? I need to take it to the next level so that I can make sure that my child’s being taken care of.”
JEN: I appreciate that so much. You’re so awesome. Thank you, much. Roni Jo.
RONI JO: Thank you for allowing me to yabber at you.
JEN: Thanks for joining us here In The Den. If you enjoyed this episode, please tell your friends, and take a minute to leave a positive rating and review wherever you listen. Good reviews make us more visible and help us reach more folks who could benefit from listening. And if you’d like to help Mama Dragons in our mission to support, educate and empower the parents of LGBTQ children, please donate at Mama Dragons.org or click the donate link in the show notes. For more information on Mama Dragons and the podcast, you can follow us on Instagram, or Facebook, or visit our website at MamaDragons.org.