It's a BRAVE New World at Troy Middle School

A few B-R-A-V-E students, teachers and staff members are working together to underscore all that is good and right about Troy Middle School.

The idea is to promote academic success by building positive relationships in classrooms, computer labs and the walkways in-between through a social and emotional outreach program.

B-R-A-V-E.

The acronym stands for Building Relationships Among Virtually Everyone. And the program at Troy is taking off in its first year thanks to the hard work of a group of 8-10 core seventh- and eighth-grade students, their teachers and the Troy Middle School administrative team, headed by principal Mike Portwood.

Portwood helped launch the program after he and members of the Troy teaching staff looked at data from a student survey and discovered students felt like they were lacking in ways to connect with adults in the building.

He said the survey also showed some students felt like no one would be there to stand up for them if they were being bullied. Through the BRAVE program, that feeling has changed—and in just a few short months.

There are signs everywhere pointing to the success of the Troy program—literally.

One announces, “We don’t act like that here.”

And, then, there are little video snippets featuring Troy’s “Swaggmaster” that help drive home ideals such as character and caring, the meaning of each one carrying extra weight because the message is delivered by a student with a bit of Troy swagger.

Portwood first learned about BRAVE when he was teaching at a school in LaGrange. He has done his homework on the subject of how a healthy school environment tends to result in greater achievement in almost all areas of student learning, too.

“I had been reading a book called, The Bully, The Bullied and The Bystander, Portwood said. “And, in the book, they said in that little trio relationship between the bully, the bullied and the bystander, really the bully has no intent of stopping what they’re doing. The bullied often times feels powerless to do so.

“And, so, really the only person they recommend that you do lean on—that has the true power to stop bullying—is the bystander. And, until the bystander stands up and says, ‘We don’t act like that here.’ Or, ‘We don’t do that here.’ Nothing is going to change.

“So, I shared a story with our students (at a recent Troy assembly),” Portwood said. “A few years ago, I had a student come into my office for something else—a shy student, but a good kid, and kind of under his breath in the course of our conversation he said, ‘So and So is hitting me in the head in the hallway every day.’

“I said, ‘What did you say? And what do you mean?’ Resistant to talk about it, he said, ‘Yeah, So and So—every time I go from science to wherever—he’s hitting me on the head.’ We checked the cameras. Unfortunately, it was true.

“Every day, when this student went from one place to another, he was getting smacked on the head with a folder from this other kid who thought it was funny. As I’m telling our students this story, I said, ‘As I reviewed some of the footage from the video, it was very difficult for me to see the face of the bully who thought this was as funny as he thought it was.

“And, it certainly was difficult for me to watch the face of the kid who was getting hit, as he was trying to avoid the blows and he was cowering. But, I told our students, the most disappointing and hard-to-watch piece of that were the dozens and dozens who walked by every single day and never did anything and never told anybody.”

Portwood has watched that mindset change almost overnight at Troy. He provided the example of a boy turning in an iPhone he found on Thursday, rather than pocketing it, because he felt like it was the right thing to do, the B-R-A-V-E- thing do.

“Part of my talk this year was, ‘Guys, it’s a very principal-like thing to say and it’s a very teacherly thing to say, ‘Here’s how we’re going to treat each other in the building,’ " Portwood said. "And, ‘We’re going to pride ourselves on respect—blah, blah, blah.’

“We can put that on T-shirts and we can put it on the sign out in front of the school, and we can send it home in newsletters. But, until you guys take that seriously, the problem won’t stop. That was a powerful point for them to get and to really empower them to take ownership of their school.

“I said they have the power to protect or neglect their school. And, truly, it’s theirs. And, so that’s one of things we’ve been focusing on this year, too, really getting hold of the bystander and to empower them to do the right thing.”