Quick Thoughts on Bullying in School

Bullying is back in the news. The Internet seems covered with reports of schools' challenges with bullying. My issue with all of this attention is that it paints a murky picture of the problem. We only hear about the extreme examples. Newspapers call our attention to it when a middle school student commits suicide or when an elementary school student commits an obscenely violent act. As teachers, however, we understand that everyday bullying is not so obvious. It can be subtle and happens on many of our children's playgrounds sometime during each school year. We also know that addressing it is much more complicated than people think.

Unfortunately what I see many schools trying to do when confronted with this problem is to adopt a program that promises to quickly “fix” bullying. Schools put up posters or conduct a few anti-bullying lesson from a kit. In my experience these are small bandages on a gaping wound. They look like they address the problem but are really just window dressing. Kids don’t plan to be bullies, and it is not something that just stops because we do a lesson on it. All kids know at some level that bullying is bad—the problem is deeper and more complex. At DSC we believe that dealing with bullying means dealing with relationships. We understand that relationships are hard and as students grow older, much more complex than what may be apparent. We know that students have to care about each other in order to begin working on a problem as complex as bullying (or teasing, exclusion, clicks, etc.).

That is why in our Caring School Community® work, we begin building relationships on the first day of school. Each week of the year, through teambuilders, buddy classroom activities, check-in meetings, and carefully planned class meetings we connect students to one another and give them skills and tools to deal with the problems they are facing. Over time we create an environment where they can have very real conversations and learn to take responsibility for their own thinking and behavior. Through this work, we reduce the instances of bullying, and also give schools a healthy way to deal with it when it does happen. This might not be the quick fix you want. But if we develop an understanding that when students demonstrate unacceptable behavior, they are simply showing us what they need to learn, we empower ourselves to see this as a teaching opportunity. We come to realize that as children they are learning how to negotiate the more complex relationships they are forming—and they need our help in doing that. It is a critical part of school and of our role as teachers.

In our work with districts using the Caring School Community program, we recognize that school is a learning environment not just for academic skills. Students are also learning how to be with others. Just like we would not expect students to get an academic skill the first time we teach it, we should not expect them to master their own behavior on the playground after one lesson either. It is a process and it needs our time.