"We Won't Do That Here", Bullies pt. 2

On the first day of school with a new principal, all of us who work in the school (I was a social worker/counselor) are anxious to hear about the new boss and his/her philosophy. This usually includes  how they became interested in teaching, where they have taught before, how honored they are to be working here at Alfred E. Neuman School, and so forth. Helene was a bit different. Young, with a June Cleaver outfit and pearls, she told us that she had become pregnant early and was left to fend for herself and her child. During those difficult years she finished high school and went on to college, raising her son on a combination of ADFC (welfare) and foodstamps. Along the way she encountered some of the contempt and disdain many people have for "welfare moms", including from teachers at her child's school. In a very sweet but clear voice she let us know "We won't do that here."

We were a nice group of people, but with that one sentence, Helene let us know she was going to be working on the culture of our school. The following strategies are some that we used, at that school and at others I worked at, and strategies that have been used to combat bullies in schools in some areas of the US. These measures do not eliminate bullying, they are not magic bullets, but especially for kids 7 through 12, they have been studied (Department of Justice) to be effective.

The first part of the process has to start with the adults and raising awareness of what bullying is and what it is not. There is some controversy about whether bullying has increased or not in the years since I went to school. Part of that is due to the fact that statistics on bullying only recently have begun to be kept; the other part is that there are differing ways of describing bullying. Most definitions of bullying include a power differential. So I would not call two 10-year-olds fighting bullying each other if they are the same size and ability. I would call it bullying if a large 10-year-old is threatening smaller kids who are not likely to fight back. Or popular girls making fun of unpopular girls who aren't as well-dressed. The whole area is one for discussion, but consensus can be reached.

As a side note, a friend wonders whether the shooting of Trayvon Martin points to a change in our society's tolerance for violence. His killer may be able to be shown to have acted legally and that, in itself, is what has people upset because it could signal a possibly awful cultural shift towards the use of force. 

But I don't want to get side-tracked. The point is that to stop bullying, the adult culture needs to be one of cooperation and mutual respect. The adults need to treat each other decently and model non-coercive  behavior to the students. Then they need to come together and convey to the kids that they will work together to make school a safe place.

Think of a group of students witnessing a bully mocking a child who has just dropped all her papers. Or who has been shoved into a locker. You have the bully, you have the kid being bullied, and you have the onlookers. One study found that 85% of a school's population generally does not bully and generally does not feel bullied although they are aware of it.

So they are the onlookers, the 85%. They do one of 3 things. They laugh, so the bully thinks he's cool. They do nothing which enables the bully to continue. Or they walk away, feeling sorry for the victim but also powerless. They usually don't tell an adult because kids don't want to be thought of as "rats" or "snitches" and they have been told by their teachers not to be "tattletales". 

What we did at one of my schools was to have a school wide meeting and a series of smaller classroom meetings in which we defined bullying behavior, told the kids we were going to work with them to stop it, and that it would no longer be cool to make fun of kids or physically threaten them at our school. That telling on a bully was not "ratting" or "tattling". Anti-bullying programs give the 85% tools to use: Get an adult. Don't laugh at what a bully is doing. Befriend bullied kids. Say out loud "That's not cool." Say out loud "We don't do that here". 

The adults work to listen to what kids told them, to hold kids accountable for their behavior, to pull parents in, to raise awareness of cyber-bullying, and to increase supervision in places like the halls and bathrooms.

And I would love to say things changed overnight, but of course they did not. But at my schools (kids up to 12 years old) and at a number of schools using similar strategies and studied through a DoJ grant, kids reported feeling safer, and there were fewer reported incidents of bullying and related aggressive behaviors. 

In my head I have a picture of cute little Marissa P. saying in a loud voice to a somewhat aggressive and larger child "You must be new. We don't do that at our school." He stopped dead in his tracks and walked away.

Anti-bullying programs (described here with minimum detail) do not and should not turn kids into the kid police or put them in danger. They should teach kids how to stay out of harm's way. They should do is make it "uncool" to bully someone, because most bullies are performing for an audience. What they also should do is to raise kids' awareness of loner kids or kids who might be likely to be targets. And teach them pro-social skills. 

As I said, this is, in some ways, a very basic description of a complex program that can take a year or two to put into place. I almost want to say something like "Don't try this at home." You have to have school-wide buy-in. But the successes I saw has me hopeful that we can change things for kids, and, somewhere along the line, change things for society as a whole.