Guidelines for Effective Discussions About Bullying
Regularly scheduled discussions with students are an important part of a whole-school bullying intervention. They work together with consistent staff actions against bullying to change school culture. Yet some types of student discussion will have little positive effect or may even increase rates of bullying. Some will be more effective. Here are some suggestions; I welcome your thoughts, questions, and ideas.
Stan Davis email: stan@stopbullyingnow.com
We will begin by looking at strategies that are unlikely to work.
Let’s look at the makeup of a classroom. Youth who bully and youth who are bullied are both likely to perceive the classroom- or the school- this way:
Many bystanders are silent in bullying situations because they think they are the only ones who object, and because they don’t have a safe and effective strategy to use. Both bullies and targets are likely see that silence as support for the bully and abandonment of the target. And if adults do not act consistently to stop bullying, our silence adds to this empowering of the bully and abandonment of the target.
Discussion topics and strategies that focus primarily on helping bullies understand targets’ feelings are unlikely to change bullying behavior as long as bullies experience the social reinforcements of popularity, peer support, and power over others. In some research studies, discussions with whole classrooms about what bullying is and how much it hurts have led to increases in the rate of bullying, as bullies hear about how to hurt others more successfully. A middle school student recently said that she thought bullies sitting in a presentation in which they were told that bullying is bad would be likely to ‘rebel out’ and bully more often.
Until adults and peer bystanders take action, discussion topics and strategies that focus primarily on what targets of bullying should do are not likely to help. Targets of bullying may have tried many of the recommended actions already and found them ineffective. In addition, some of the strategies we have traditionally recommended may make things worse. Jane Bluestein points out in her excellent article “What’s Wrong with I-messages”(available free at http://janebluestein.com) that training targets to use I- messages can give bullies more control of them.
When targets of bullying say “I feel hurt when you call me names and I want you to stop,” she says, they are really saying “You have the power to hurt me.”
What if the bully welcomes that power? Like I-messages, many strategies that we suggest to targets come from the idea that targets and bullies should ‘work things out.’ Yet bullying is not two-way conflict, but an aggressive action directed from one person or group toward another with the intent of doing harm. Imagine calling the police about a robbery in progress and being told to tell the robber how you feel. Imagine being asked to mediate with the robber later. Strategies that were designed for resolving conflict between two equal parties in an argument are likely to make bullying situations worse by consolidating the bully’s power. As Dr. Susan Limber of the Olweus Bullying Prevention Program says, mediation approaches are for situations in which both people have done something wrong.
Katherine Newman wrote in her excellent book Rampage: The Social Roots of School Shootings. (New York: Basic Books, 2004):
“Efforts to focus on changing either the bullies [through telling them to be kind] or the victims are unlikely to be effective, … The desire to behave better… is a weak motivator compared to the status gains that come from teasing and harassment….Victims have no real way out of these situations [through their own actions] because their low status makes most of the recommended strategies… ineffective.” (293)
Summary - What doesn’t work?
- Discussing bullying with students without taking action as a staff.
- Telling the whole student body to be kind.
- Training the targets: “Tell them you don’t like it.” “Ignore them.” “Use an I-message.”
Helping students “work it out”- mediation-based approaches.
What does work?
We begin by understanding what a classroom or school social system is really like:
The majority of students in most school social systems are potential defenders- young people who want the bullying to stop but who do not act because they are afraid of being bullied themselves. Adults are not that much different from students in this regard. Most of us have stood by helpless when we saw parents saying abusive things to their children in the grocery store or other public places. We do not always act when we hear hate speech. It is sometimes hard to know what we could do that would be safe and effective.
Classroom discussion strategies that focus on empowering these potential defenders can significantly reduce rates of bullying.
What actions can bystanders take?
I have talked with more than 40,000 students in grades K-12 over the past seven years. When I ask what bystanders should do, most groups of students talk about confronting the bully. They say that bystanders should go over to the bully and tell him or her to ‘cut it out’. When I ask them to come up and show me what they mean, they often get right in the bully’s face and angrily tell him or her to stop. Young people seem strongly pulled toward this response, which is consistently modeled for them on television and in movies. They also know that this response is likely to get them hurt.
Talking with bystanders has taught me that when we do not discourage confrontation, we make it likely that they will do nothing. At my own school, I taught a unit about rumors in the fifth grade. We talked about many things the students could do when a peer brought them a rumor. Those strategies included telling the peer to stop spreading rumors. When I followed up with these students later, they told me that rumors continued to spread in their grade. I asked about the strategies we had discussed, and they told me that they couldn’t confront their friends because they feared losing friendship. As we talked I realized that leaving confrontation on the table as a possible strategy had stopped them from paying attention to any of the other strategies we had discussed. I have heard this feedback at all age levels, and have learned to discourage confrontation when discussing bystander action. Here is a parallel:
Imagine that you look in through a store window and see a robbery in progress. What will you definitely NOT do? I wouldn’t go in and tell the robber to cut it out. Does that mean there is nothing you could do? You could…..
- Call 911
- Write down a description of the robbers and their car
- Warn others not to go in the store
- Come back later and help the store owner clean up
- Come back later and shop in that store more or otherwise contribute money to help the business recover.
In that fifth grade follow-up discussion about rumors, we then explored all the non-confrontational ways students could react when they heard rumors. They talked about changing the subject, appearing interested and then not passing the rumor on, befriending the person the rumor was about, and similar interventions. They told me later that they had put those strategies into practice, and had been successful in stopping the spread of rumors. When we do not allow confrontation to be one of the strategies under discussion, we enable young people to find other strategies.
What are those other strategies?
Bystanders can:
- Choose not to be part of the problem. Quietly choosing not to spread a rumor, or telling your friends to join you in not spreading it, may be the most effective way to stop the rumor- just as removing flammable material stops a wildfire from spreading.
- Help the target get away. Targets are often told: “Just walk away,” yet young people tell me consistently that walking from bullying alone feels unsafe and weak. Yet if peers invite the target to leave the situation with them, targets can leave without a sense of defeat. We can help bystanders see that this can be done from a distance and using a real or made-up excuse (“Hey Jim- Mr. Dennis wanted you to come to his classroom.”)
- Sit with, walk with, or be friends with the target after the bullying is over. Targets of bullying may be chosen by the bully because of their social isolation, or they may become isolated as a result of the bullying. Either way, they often need friends and the protection of a social group.
- Ask their friends to stop bullying others. Friends are likely to listen to each other.
- Tell adults. Especially in middle school, it is often difficult for adults to find out what happened. A code of silence descends over the people who witnessed bullying. Breaking through the silence requires protection for those who tell. It requires that we lose the concept of ‘tattling’ and show students that we welcome their reports. And it requires helping youth learn that they even help the bully by telling. Since youth who bully are likely to be in much more serious trouble later if they do not change, telling on a friend is a way to help that friend.
How do we help bystanders become active?
Asking the right questions is often a better strategy than teaching a list of responses. When young people create their own interventions they are more likely to use them. We can help students to think through the issues I have already outlined here, using classroom discussion and journaling:
- What does a classroom or school look like to bullies?
- To targets?
- What would happen if we had repeated discussions in this class about how bad bullying is and how it makes targets feel?
- What would happen if we trained targets to say they don’t like bullying?
- What is REALLY going on? How many potential defenders do you think we have in this classroom? (a brief written survey in which students identify which of the four categories they are most likely to fall into will be more useful than a show of hands.)
- What do you think adults do when they see bullying in the adult world? Talking about the parallels to what we would do if we saw a crime in progress or a parent talking abusively to a child in the store is a helpful way to frame this question.
- What alternatives do you have when you see bullying? Which are likely to make things worse?
- When you see bullying, what can you do that is safe and helpful?
- What have you done? Did it work? What will you do next time?
We can help students create positive bystander actions through interactive and improvisational theater. One recommended resource is the book Training to Imagine: Practical Improvisational Theatre Techniques to Enhance Creativity, Teamwork, Leadership, and Learning, by Kat Koppett; Stylus Publishing (VA), 2001. We can set up acting scenarios based on young peoples’ real observations of bullying. In the safe space of the theater, we can try out one solution after another, keeping track of what works and what doesn’t. This skill-practice can help the whole class explore bystander actions that are safe and effective.
We can read and discuss books that focus on bystander action. There are many novels that are useful, including The Hundred Dresses, by Eleanor Estes; The Revealers by Doug Wilhelm, and Staying Fat for Sarah Byrne, by Chris Crutcher. With any book, we can read a chapter at a time, act the crucial scenes in the classroom to learn how the characters feel, predict what the characters may do in the future, and then continue reading. Students can create alternative stories or alternative endings. They can draw parallels between what they have read and what happens at school. This is a powerful way to discuss and rehearse effective bystander actions.
We can discuss what the students see and have done, being careful not to use names or specifics. It is important to bring any theoretical discussion back to specifics at the school. In what real situations could they use what they have just learned? What would be likely to happen? Below is an excerpt from a ‘bullying observation diary’ kept by a middle school student. Students were directed to write about what they saw, without using names. Using these observations, we have the opportunity to explore and practice interventions that can be used effectively in real situations. Some observations, like this one, will need to be further de-identified to allow classroom discussion of them without hurting targets’ feelings.
INCIDENT 4
Location: Locker room.
What did the person do and/or say? Be specific and get as much detail as you can.
this person keeps calling her fat she doesn’t laugh the girl becomes sad, and now changes in the shower in the locker room
What did the other people around the incident do and say? Were they silent? Did they laugh? Did they join the bullying? Did they say or do something to stop the behavior?
the others do nothing.
We can ask what kinds of supports bystanders and targets want from adults, to make their actions safe. High school students in Glen Rock, NJ recently told me:
- "Let us report bullying with protection- privately and confidentially.
- Welcome our reports and act on them.
- Form strong positive relationships with us so we feel free to report bullying to you.
- Don’t be afraid to take action to stop bullying.
- Listen- keep your eyes and ears open."
We can create a list of ‘what we do if we are bullied and when we see bullying’ to hang in the classroom. Here is one such list, created by second grade students at my school after they read Shel Silverstein’s book Runny Babbit:
How to solve problems:
- Take and share turns
- If you said something wrong, say what you did and say you’re sorry. (but only if you really are sorry.....)
- If someone teases you, say "Please stop."
- Or walk away with someone else
- Or confuse them so you can get away.
- Or say: "I am really mad!"
- And if you see someone being mean:
- Walk away with the person who’s being teased.
- Be their friend.
- Or tell the person "Please stop" in a friendly way.
- And if these solutions don’t work, tell a teacher.
We can praise students when they use the skills we are teaching them. As I discussed in my book Schools Where Everyone Belongs (Research Press, 2005), that praise will be more effective when we tell students what we see them doing and the effect that behavior has, rather than telling them how we feel about their behavior. ("I noticed that you helped Richard get away when he was being teased. He looked relieved," rather than "I was so proud of you.") Praise that focuses on actions and the positive results of those actions helps young people develop internal motivation to continue those actions.
We can help students set goals at the individual, classroom, or school level. At my school students created grade-level goals for 2005-2006 and then worked together to clarify steps students said they would use to meet them. Here are some of those goals:
K and 1 Our Goal for the Year: We want everyone to have friends
How we will make this happen:
- We will ask people to play with us.
- We will play with people.
- We will look and make sure no one is left out.
- When someone doesn’t want to play we can ask them again another day.
- We can smile and say hello to people.
2 and 3 Our Goal for the Year: We want no name calling or teasing here at the bean school
How we will make this happen:
- If your friend is calling people names, ask the friend nicely to stop.
- If someone is being called names, help them get away.
- If people call you names, get away from them or ask for help.
- If you are thinking about calling someone a name, count to 10 or take a breath and think about what you say before you say it.
4 Our Goal for the Year: We want people to play by the rules and be fair How we will make this happen:
- It is easy to play by the rules if you are winning.
- It is hard to play by the rules if you are losing or if someone else cheats.
- We can remember that if you win by cheating you feel bad later.
- We can remember not to complain if we are losing but to try harder instead.
5 Our Goal for the Year: We do not want to have a popular group, with other people left out
How we will make this happen:
- When someone tries to start a popular group, don’t go along with them.
- Play with everyone; include people who are left out.
- Stick up for people if someone is leaving them out.
- If someone is being mean, ask them to stop in a nice way.
- Help people get away if they are being teased.
- Don’t give people too much power by going along with them if they say: "I will only be your friend if you...." If they do that say "No thanks."
Students are most likely to work actively toward goals when they have created those goals for themselves, when the steps to be taken to reach those goals are clear and realistic, and when adults structure ongoing discussions to help young people focus on whether they are working effectively toward their goals, what individuals are doing to reach the goals, and whether the steps the students have chosen are working. To maintain student motivation and ownership of the goals, it is important that adults not use those goals as a way to criticize students ("You are not working toward your goals now," "You SAID you would…."), but instead reinforce student actions toward the goals ("I noticed that Billy and Tajandra played by the rules even when they were losing. That fits with your class goals.")
We can create friendship teams for excluded students in which the excluded student and three or four high-status peers meet for lunch with the counselor or teacher four times to discuss how those peers can help the student make friends. The team then invites the student into activities, tells others positive things about the student, and tells the student about things he or she is doing to make friendship more difficult. Some students have volunteered for this helping role aimed at ALL students who have no one to play with.
We can work with students to find new ways to understand peer interactions. For example, I worked with my students to help them understand the classmate or schoolmate relationship as an alternative to seeing "friend" or "enemy" as their only choices. We drew parallels to the adult workplace, where we have a choice between being friends or colleagues, and where being enemies is destructive. This is a summary created by some of our fifth grade students:
"There are three possible connections between people:
1. We can be friends. That means:
- You hang out together;
- You help each other;
- You play with each other;
- You stick up for each other;
- They like you and you like them;
- And you trust each other.
2. We can be classmates but not friends. That means:
- It’s OK if we don’t like each other.
- We are polite to each other.
- We are not mean to each other and we help each other in schoolwork and in emergencies.
- We may stay away from each other.
- We may choose not to play with each other but we do not stop the other person from having friends.
- We do not try to hurt the other person.
3. OR we could be enemies. The Bean School doesn’t allow that and if we act like enemies we will get consequences. Being an enemy means:
- Trying to hurt the other person’s body or feelings.
- Making fun of the other person.
- Stopping the other person from having friends.
- Starting or spreading rumors or lying about the other person to get them in trouble for something they didn’t do.
You have a choice."
We can help them to understand what real friendship is and what their options are if a ‘friend’ tries to control them. I have found it useful to draw the parallel between controlling and abusive friendships and spouse abuse. Both involve control. Both often alternate between controlling actions and hurtful behaviors and periods of ‘making up’ and friendly behavior. In both the aggressor blames the target for the behavior and then promises to do better. We can help young people understand that, by calling this kind of relationship friendship in childhood and adolescence, they are training themselves to accept abusive and controlling behavior in a dating relationship. We can encourage youth to leave hurtful ‘friendships’ and find other friendships in which the other person does not try to control them.
We can help young people understand the social forces that underlie bullying behavior. Students are more able to work against bullying and exclusion when they understand the parallels between bullying and other forms of social oppression, including racism, sexism, and homophobia. In addition, both boys and girls benefit from understanding the gender-based pressures that they are surrounded by. When they understand social and media pressures they are less likely to enforce narrow gender roles and oppressive social expectations on each other. Useful resources include:
We can discuss the historical parallels to bullying, with a focus on what they teach us to do now. When we talk about the civil rights movement, womens’ history, the holocaust, colonialism, or other historical issues relating to oppression and liberation, we can draw parallels to the exclusion and bullying of subgroups in our own schools. And when we talk about the people who made a difference, we can help students see what they can do in the present. In discussing Martin Luther King, Jr., instead of just focusing on what it means to ‘have a dream,’ we can ask students how they are carrying on his work in the present. We can focus on what they have done to make sure everyone is treated with respect. When we talk about Rosa Parks, we can talk about the power of quietly refusing to go along with something wrong, and about the many people around the United States who supported the Montgomery bus boycott in different ways. Nikki Giovanni’s 2005 book Rosa (Henry Holt and Co.) is a great resource to help young people see what it means to work together for change.
We can discuss the nature and impact of indirect harassment. When young people call a test, or a movie they don’t like, ‘gay’ they are sending a powerful negative message to everyone nearby that gay is bad. That message makes gay and lesbian youth feel less safe, and serves to reinforce the biases of others. Saying that a sports team ‘played like girls’ has the same impact on girls and women nearby. Yet I have found that young people often do not understand the impact of this very common behavior on others. We can deal with this behavior through disciplinary interventions and by discussing it, with a focus on the questions: "Who does this behavior hurt?" and "What can you do when you hear indirect harassment?" Young people hearing this kind of speech have many ways to discourage it, ranging from the personal statement ("I have a gay friend and that kind of talk hurts him.") to the direct request ("Please stop talking like that.") to humor ("I didn’t know tests had sex- how do tests do it?") And when students hear that someone ‘played like a girl’, they can say "He must be pretty good, then."
We can empower our students to teach other students what they have learned. Teaching others is a powerful way of deepening learning. Work with students to create videos, plays, books, and other teaching techniques and then help them teach younger students. At the Bean school we have created the tradition of ‘legacy videos’ planned, videotaped, and edited by all exiting fifth grade classes, teaching attitudes and skills they have found important in their time at the Bean School. Topics for these videos have included stopping rumors, how to make and keep friends, and the effects of television. These videos are used in our monthly ‘peace day’ assemblies, which gather together our students by grade level to welcome new students and staff, discuss issues of importance to them, reinforce the school’s values, and encourage the students to set goals for the school’s climate.
Summary: What does work?
- Implement staff-based schoolwide interventions before working to activate bystanders.
- Help potential defenders see that they are not alone.
- Using questioning and discussion techniques, help bystanders create a wide range of safe and effective strategies for intervening, and protect them when they intervene.
- Use theater and literature to help young people find effective strategies.
- Use parallels with adult situations to help young people choose effective actions.
- Discuss real situations.
- Help students understand social interaction between peers.
- Help them to understand what real friendship is and what their options are if a ‘friend’ tries to control them.
- Encourage students to reach out in friendship to isolated youth.
- Praise positive student actions.
- Help students set and reach goals relating to school climate.
- Help young people understand the social forces that underlie bullying behavior.
- Discuss the historical parallels to bullying, with a focus on what they teach us to do now.
- Discuss the nature and impact of indirect harassment.
- and Empower students to teach each other the strategies they have learned.
We can help students imagine and create a new school climate when we use classroom or grade-level discussions to find new paths for bystander action. As young people succeed in setting and reaching their goals, they can join with us to make schools more inviting and safer. What bystanders do - or choose not to do - can make a real difference. As Martin Luther King, Jr. said "In the end we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends."
Stan Davis http://www.stopbullyingnow.com stan@stopbullyingnow.com ©2006
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