SPECIAL REPORT
What SRO’s or any adult should do to handle a situation is to de-escalate the problem, while remembering that these kids are thinking with their feelings and not processing information the same way
adults do.” —Mo Canady, National Association of School Resource Officers
Salt Lake City Schools transportation employees eat lunch with popsicle sticks on their fingers, part of training to understand the challenges experienced by students with disabilities on a daily basis, which Director of Transportation Ken Martinez said led to a discussion on bullying.
college at 18, that their frontal lobe isn’t completely ready for it,” Canady explained. “Adolescents are thinking with their feelings. We want kids to behave like adults, and this isn’t an ex- cuse, it’s a fact. They can’t. They don’t have the capacity. They process differ- ently than an adult does. Knowing this is the first step in understanding why they respond the way they do. “It’s not that we shouldn’t discipline them, it’s that we need to accept that they don’t think like adults,” he contin- ued. “What SRO’s or any adult should do to handle a situation is to de-esca- late the problem, while remembering that these kids are thinking with their feelings,and not processing informa- tion the same way adults do. The last
thing we want to do is haul a student off to jail during the school day.” Amy Santandrea, director
of pupil transportation for the Berne-Knox-Westerlo district near Albany, New York, said, “Kids can be so cruel. I think back to some of the situations that went on when I was in school, and it was definitely bullying. However, it was acceptable behavior back then,” she continued. “I can’t imagine the mental trauma the stu- dents go through and how that carries them through life. There is a neigh- boring district which had a student who was being bullied. This happened a few years ago, and the student committed suicide. I took a class with his bus driver and when that driver
Read about a program implemented in 2017 at a New York school district that addresses bullying of LGBTQ students on the school bus at
stnonline.com/go/dp.
22 School Transportation News • OCTOBER 2022
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