PHOTO COURTESY OF OCDSB

Across the province, schools are participating in Bullying Awareness and Prevention Week. However, Brett Reynolds says that every day should be bullying prevention day.

Reynolds is in charge of programs that promote well-being and safety for students in the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board.

Bullying Awareness and Prevention Week is run by the Ontario Ministry of Education and has been celebrated in the third week of November since 2009. Reynolds says the initiative is about raising awareness for the school board’s anti-bullying programs, which are incorporated into the curriculum throughout the year.

“We do an awful lot and we talk an awful lot about bullying and anti-bullying every day, every month, all year long,” Reynolds said. “It’s one of those things that educators are constantly concerned with and trying to be better with.”

Reynolds said that he thinks it’s just part of human nature to pick on others who are different. With education, kids can learn to be more accepting.

One of the ways schools try to combat bullying is by having student groups devoted to promoting diversity. Danielle Guertin is the faculty advisor for the Gay Straight Alliance at Sir Robert Borden High School. She said the GSA has not only created a safe-space for students in the school, but has decreased homophobia and bullying as well.

“I’d like to think that we are slowly having an effect on the student population here. Because like any high school, homophobia was a daily part of life,” Guertin said. “People would snicker when the Gay Straight Alliance meeting would come on announcements.”

Guertin said the culture at the school has changed since the GSA was founded over seven years ago. “I asked the kids, ‘have you been seeing it, have you witnessed or been involved in any kinds of bullying.’ And they said no. They’re not seeing it, they’re not hearing it.”

Despite district-wide efforts to combat bullying, Reynolds said it is still an issue in schools. This year’s Bullying and Prevention Awareness Week falls on the one-month anniversary of Jamie Hubley’s suicide. Hubley was a student at A.Y. Jackson Secondary School in Kanata. Following his suicide, reports surfaced that he had been bullied in school for being gay. He also suffered from severe depression, and was under the care of doctors.

“A lot of attention has been paid to the bullying aspect,” Reynolds said. “Suicide is a very complicated thing. There are a lot of factors at play when a child decides to take their own life. There usually isn’t just any one cause.”

Reynolds said he hopes people in the community will use the recent tragedy to become more involved with anti-bullying efforts already in place.

“If there is anything positive, from our point of view, coming out of that tragedy, it is the increased attention and awareness of some of the good things that are being done,” Reynolds said.