Something Better

Calming the Classroom Bully
January / February 2000

Standing up to Bullies brochure (pdf)

It starts out young, and it starts out small - a push during kindergarten recess or some under-the-breath name-calling when first graders are lining up in the hallway. It's dubbed bullying or, to give it an updated 90s label, harassment. Everybody knows it happens, and, depending on which grade you are talking about and which survey you use, anywhere from eight to 25 percent of students say they are victimized by bullies at school. A far greater number say they have witnessed bullying (42 percent) or simply know that it's happening in their school (56 percent).

It wasn't that long ago that schools took a "kids-will-be-kids" attitude and advised students to ignore the problem or even deemed the victim just as responsible as the bully. For a variety of reasons, that mode of operating doesn't work and probably never did, say the experts. Statements from student assailants in the recent rash of school shootings in the U.S. lend credence to the belief that persistent bullying leaves long-term scars on the victims. These scars, psychologists say, can result in low self-esteem and depression and possibly contribute to the "pay-back" element in school violence.

So where and how does it all start? And, most importantly, how can teachers, principals, parents and all the other adults in children's lives play a role in stopping this age-old problem? After the Littleton, Colorado school massacre opinions ran rampant on the best way to tackle the issue. For many teachers in the trenches, the answer lies in smaller classes, more supportive parents, and a school climate that encourages staff and students to care about each other. Another key element is zero tolerance for bullying.

One teacher's tips for dealing with bullies Lynn Hambrick, second-grade teacher in Kentucky, suggests some other anti-bullying strategies that have worked for her over the years: Engage students in discussions about the differences in people Have children help each other academically. Kids aren't likely to bully children they help and get to know. Give kids a structured, consistent environment. If you do what you say you're going to do, children learn to respect your word. When drawing up class rosters, try to spread out students with behavior problems.

For Lynn Hambrick, a second-grade teacher at Carlisle County (KY) Elementary School, it's clear the problem begins at home.

"Parents are just plain afraid to discipline their children," she says, adding that she's seen a definite increase in bullying during her 27 years in the classroom. "It's very apparent that there's a conflict between the way kids act at home and the way they're permitted to act at school."

Hambrick spends lots of time emphasizing the school taboo against physical aggression and talking about language that's forbidden at school, even if parents allow it at home.

Hambrick's school is one of several in rural western Kentucky benefiting from bullying-prevention strategies designed by Dr. Allan L. Beane of Murray State University's College of Education.

Dr. Beane, author of the just published The Bully Free Classroom (Free Spirit Publishing), says he tried to consider the multiple burdens facing classroom teachers in devising strategies. The book features more than 100 activities and reproducible hand-outs designed so that K-8 teachers can integrate them into a variety of curriculum areas, including art, reading, writing, and public speaking. He hopes his strategies can help create schools where all students feel "a sense of belonging" and free up instructional time now lost to disruptions caused by bullying behavior.

He encourages teachers to let children know that they have the power to prevent and stop bullying if everyone works together. He cautions teachers that if they send the message that students should report bullying, "you need to respond quickly and effectively." Students will lose trust and the reporting will stop, he adds, if teachers fail to act.

Beane emphasizes that his ideas don't constitute just another program. "It's not something you do, and then you're done. We must keep in mind that society has gradually taught children through 'little messages' to be intolerant, more selfish, and violent

in their attitudes and behaviors. Therefore, we must take the same approach and bombard them everyday with power messages that can change those attitudes and behaviors."

Hambrick agrees and sets the tone for her classroom with the motto "Be kind to one another." She also incorporates bullying prevention into reading, often selecting fables with morals about fairness, and into writing lessons, using prompts like: "I feel good when..." or "I feel bad when..."

"Writing is such an important way to connect to what's happening in the children's lives," she says, using it as way to get to know children personally and as a jumping-off point for many classroom discussions.

And even though her children are only 7 or 8, she brings the newspaper into the classroom each day, not shying away from stories about violence both in and out of school. "We talk about stories where people aren't treated fairly," she says. "We discuss what a deep impact our rejecting someone might have."

She also suggests some other anti-bullying strategies that have worked for her over the years:

Engage students in discussions about the differences in people.

Have children help each other academically. Kids aren't likely to bully children they help and get to know.

Give kids a structured, consistent environment. If you do what you say you're going to do, children learn to respect your word. * When drawing up class rosters, try to spread out students with behavior problems.

No strategy or program can compete with the positive effect of low class size on quelling disruptive behavior, says Hambrick.

"You can do nothing better for a teacher than to lower her class size. I started out the year with 17 and now I have 19. We can help one another and be supportive. Last year I had 24. There's a tremendous difference."

Although bullying certainly can have its roots in early childhood, some statistics show that the behavior peaks during the middle school years.

"It is common to this age group," says Linda Vogel-Flier, principal of Parkview School in the central Illinois village of Creve Coeur.

She estimates that at least 15 percent of the school's fifth through eighth graders have bullied or been bullied during the past school year. For boys much of the teasing centers on sexual orientation, she says. Girls' nastiness tends to zero in on appearance -- with clothes a big focus.

To tackle the problem the principal and the police department applied for and received a $153,000 U.S. Department of Justice grant earlier this year to establish a project called "Partners Against Victimization in Education (PAVE). The project involves a

wide range of stakeholders, including teachers, students, police, parents, and Neighborhood Watch groups. The first step in the process is to collect data.

"We need to know what the problem is before we can come up with an effective response," says Vogel-Flier. Data will include such basic items as when and where bullying occurs, as well as more probing analysis into the offenders' role models or past history of being victimized themselves. "We're hoping patterns will emerge," she adds.

"We're taking a serious view of what some call kids' stuff," explains Vogel-Flier. "Bullying affects school performance, attendance, and how kids feel about themselves. The basic problem is that bullying is a power struggle between individuals." She agrees with Kentucky teacher Lynn Hambrick that parents' attitudes play a major role.

"Lots of kids go home, say they're being bullied, and the parents respond, 'Just punch him,'" says Vogel-Flier. "In our problem-solving phase, we'll look for things to raise parental awareness, to change this mindset."

Additional grant money will be needed to implement any solutions the stakeholders develop to attack the problem in the family, school and community.

In order to involve students in the process, PAVE has set up a group with representatives from each grade level. Initially, students met with officers from the state's gang prevention center. Now Julie Wettstein, Parkview's behavior disorder teacher, provides adult leadership. Students receive training in data collection, learning how to spot conflict and to write it down, says Wettstein. Student surveys show that most bullying at Parkview occurs in the classroom.

"I was surprised," says Wettstein. "The surveys are designed to make teachers more aware. If kids are bullies they have many ways of doing it."

Psychologist Susan Limber, director of the bullying prevention project at the Institute for Families in Society at the University of South Carolina, says her research confirms that the classroom's a hotspot for bullying, primarily in the form of verbal taunting and nasty notes. The playground comes in second.

The prevention program, which she helped pilot in several South Carolina schools, was developed in Norway and has met with success in other European countries and Canada. In its first year in South Carolina, bullying incidents decreased by about one-half. Such dramatic effects didn't occur the second year, but that may have been the result of a reduction in the hours program consultants spent in the schools, says Dr. Limber.

"It's a whole-school approach," she says, explaining that everyone in the school, including parents, teachers, students, bus drivers, and custodians, participates in the training and implementation. "The premise is that we all need to look out for each other more carefully and keep our fingers on the pulse of how kids are treated."

Letting the problem fester can have serious long-term consequences. Middle-school bullies, Dr. Limber notes, are more likely to rack up an arrest record in their 20s. Their victims, she adds, are likely to avoid school, get lower grades and, in the long run, may end up suffering from depression. Students who witness lots of bullying can feel anxious and threatened and perhaps even guilty for not intervening. Dr. Limber admits that she'd feel "inundated" if she were a classroom teacher trying to sort through the multitude of approaches touted as solutions for combating school bullying. That's why, she explains, everybody needs to get involved in making the school a safer place to be.

"We're a bit naive if we think just doing a classroom activity every once in awhile without changing the norms in the school is going to work." The whole school approach does require extra effort and closer supervision of students, Dr. Limber says. "But it's a program that will have tremendous pay-off for teachers."

Although experts like Dr. Limber say it's better to nip bullying in the bud before the behavior becomes entrenched, often that doesn't happen, and the behavior continues into high school.

When that happens at Mahanoy Area High School in Mahanoy City, PA, teacher Dennis Vavra says there's a system in place to make sure things don't get out of hand. That wasn't always the case in this mountainous coal region dotted with small towns, says Vavra, who teaches 10th grade English. A few years ago a student from a nearby school, who had borne the brunt of bullying, retaliated by stabbing his tormenter to death.

It was a wake-up call for all of us," he explains. "In our school we tell kids that the first time you feel threatened or that something derogatory is said to you, seek counseling and find out your rights. We want kids to do this right away so nothing escalates."

Vavra's school, like all others in his state, has a Student Assistance Program, which trains certain staff to recognize and deal with a host of discipline and crisis situations. Vavra and nearly a dozen of his colleagues, including the principal, several teachers and counselors, make up the student assistance team. The school makes sure all of its 440 students know who the team members are.

"We're a small school," says Vavra, a faculty member for 22 years. "That has a great effect on our ability to handle this. I know just about all the kids. It's not impersonal. It's not a place where kids could be anonymous. I think just about every kid

has a teacher he or she could talk to about a problem. As a staff we know who the bullies are. We approach them. We try to implement measures to stop the behavior before it reaches the point of a physical brawl. I can't walk away from anything. I make myself get involved."

The proactive approach seems to be working, says Vavra. He remembers only two fights during the past school year, both between girls. He's not surprised at the gender of the combatants, he adds. "They're bullying over boyfriends, over who makes the cheerleading squad, even over academics. There's big competition to be the top dog in the class."

The girls, like the boys, face traditional penalties, including in-school suspension and after-school detention with parent pick-up at 5 p.m. If the bullying persists and a warning or visit to the principal doesn't work, students can find themselves in front of a district justice at the courthouse just a half block from school, says Vavra.

The school district's discipline policy, crafted with teacher input and approved by the board of education, details these consequences. Parents have to sign the policy handbook before their children can enroll in school. District courts have the power to levy fines for bullying, smoking on school property, and other infractions.

Vavra estimates that about 30 students from his school appeared in court during the 1998-99 school year with minimum fines averaging nearly $100. If parents or students can't or won't pay, the offenders have to make restitution by cleaning the school cafeteria floor, sweeping the halls and stairwells, or performing other community service.

The veteran teacher lauds the system as a great way to get parents' attention. "You hit parents in the pocketbook. It's not a perfect system but it's better than anything we've had before."

For more information: Dr. Allan Beane offers workshops for teachers, parents and school administrators on how to prevent and stop bullying. Contact him at Creative Solutions for Schools, 1621 Cardinal Dr., Murray KY 42071. Phone: 502-762-6819. E-mail: Allan.Beane@coe.murraystate.edu. Bully Free Classroom is available from Free Spirit Publishing for $19.95 www.freespirit.com or 1-800-735-7323. Free Spirit also publishes an amusing but thoughtful paperback for kids, Bullies are a Pain in the Brain by Trevor Romain ($9.95) To get more details on Partners against Victimization in Education, contact Parkview School, 800 Groveland Ave., Creve Coeur, IL 61610 or call 309-698-3610. Visit the U.S. Department of Justice website at www.usdoj.gov for more on federal anti-bullying programs and grants. To find out about setting up a Bullying Prevention Program through the Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence at the University of Colorado, visit www.colorado.edu or call 303-492-8465. To learn more about Pennsylvania's Student Assistance Program, visit www.pde.psu.edu and click on the school safety resources link.

Mary Anne Hess is a freelance writer specializing in education issues. She is a long-time classroom volunteer and PTA activist in suburban Washington, D.C., public schools.

By Mary Anne Hess