For years I’ve been a medical consultant for HealthTeacher.com. Recently they published a very helpful article on “Banishing Bullies.” I thought that this section of the article, on “Rules for Preventing Bullying” was particularly helpful. I hope that readers who are parents, teachers, coaches, pastors, and others who love and care for children will find this information helpful.
Jonathan Cohen, president of the Center for Social and Emotional Education, says more than 160,000 American students stay home from school on any given day because they’re afraid of being bullied.
Understand what bullying is, and isn’t: Despite the prevalence of bullying, Cohen says there’s actually a lot of confusion as to what is and what is not bullying. “Most bullying prevention experts focus on two key critical factors: power and intent,” he says. “Did that person or group with more power intentionally hurt or humiliate a person or group with less power?”
Promote pro-upstander behavior: For every bully and victim, there’s usually a witness – someone who sees it happen and chooses to stand by and say nothing. That’s your typical bystander behavior. But bully prevention experts increasingly are talking about the importance of being an upstander – someone who acts directly or indirectly to stop the act of bullying.
“We need to raise awareness that there’s never a bully and a victim without a witness,” he says, adding that teachers can explicitly support students in learning how to become upstanders:
Cohen encourages teachers to talk to their principal and community leaders about creating a committee to study and come up with recommendations for a comprehensive bullying-prevention program. “Every school, like every individual, is unique,” he says. “There will be common themes, but understanding a school’s own history, strengths, needs and goals will make a bullying-prevention strategy more successful.”