New Year’s Resolution: Prevent Bullying at Your School
How can you prevent bullying at your school in the new year? We asked Glenn Manning, Making Caring Common’s Senior Program Coordinator and a former Wellness Coordinator at a large public school, for his advice.
What is the most important thing you’ve learned about bullying prevention?
The most effective way to reduce bullying behaviors is to create a school environment where students feel safe and included.
Positive interactions and caring relationships foster positive school climate and can be important protective factors from bullying and victimization. At the same time, it’s vital that hurtful behaviors are addressed immediately and appropriately as they occur.
Unfortunately, many bullying interventions are ineffective because they are reactive and do not take proactive steps to address the culture of the school, the beliefs and values of staff, and the norms within the community.
What steps can individual teachers and counselors take to reduce and prevent bullying?
1. Take the time to get to know each student as an individual.
For example:
Make an effort to learn students’ names as soon as possible at the beginning of the school year
Ask students about their goals
Demonstrate an interest in students’ lives outside of school
Use our Relationship Mapping strategy to identify gaps and make a plan to reach out to students who aren’t well known to staff
Allow time for students to get to know each other, particularly students who might be different from one another. Getting to know others can promote empathy and understanding and can help with classroom communication.
2. Set aside regular time to build community as a class.
For example:
Consider hosting weekly meetings or closing circles where students start or end the week on a positive note or talk about their concerns and accomplishments
Make space for students to acknowledge each other’s accomplishments and offer support
3. Finally, avoid the words “bully” and “victim” when talking about students.
Instead, tell students that they are engaging in “bullying behaviors” when you want them to understand the impact of their actions. Labeling students instead of their behaviors can lead to student identification with the label and unintentionally reinforce negative behaviors.
Try addressing the issues underlying bullying directly. For example, if you notice there is teasing based on gender or sexual identity, stop the bullying immediately, refer to school and classroom rules and norms, and, of course, support the student being bullied both during the experience and afterwards. You may also consider imposing any necessary consequences, but remember to talk directly to students about the importance of making their classroom a safe space for all students. Address what upstanders can do, express concern about students’ inaction, or provide positive reinforcement for students who demonstrated care and concern.
Provide students with opportunities to practice leadership skills in positive ways through classroom jobs, special projects such as joining a School Climate Committee, and activities that encourage them to expand their “circle of concern” for others.
What steps can a school community take to reduce and prevent bullying?
School communities should actively build warm and caring relationships between students and adults, provide ample opportunities for students to build relationships with their peers, engage students in community-building activities, and interrupt and respond to bullying behaviors immediately, when they occur.
Because bullying tends to decrease when even one bystander defends a peer, it’s also important that adults teach students problem-solving strategies so they can interrupt and respond to bullying behaviors independently.
What are a few of your favorite resources and why?
Teaching Tolerance created A New Set of Rules, which can help teachers create a classroom constitution at the beginning of the school year. Keep in mind how important it is to return to this document and collaboratively revise it throughout the year!
Making Caring Common’s Bullying Prevention Tips provides many great ideas you might find helpful.
And if your school is ready to use data and low-burden strategies to reduce bullying and promote social, emotional, and ethical capacities like empathy and gratitude, be sure to register for our Caring Schools Network today!
