When I look back through the dim, gray mists of time, searching through the archives of my memory, I can pinpoint my first definite encounter with a school bully. It wasn’t a particularly negative experience in the long run. I didn’t let the bully’s verbal abuse lead to a violent encounter, nor did I let it impact my feeling of safety in the classroom. It was fifth grade and I was in a class largely comprised of students I had not previously known. This particular bully’s reputation was completely foreign to me, so when he tried to badger me into some kind of showdown , I didn’t “know better” and just back down.
Perhaps I was foolhardy following this confrontation, but subsequent run-ins with bullies in the years that followed always worked out for me. Bullies never left me with emotional or physical scars. I guess I was lucky. For “back in those days” there were few, if any, schools with effective antibullying programs like there are today. Heck, “back in those days” we still carried dimes and nickels to use payphones too.
Today, antibullying programs are common, many are quite effective, and an emphasis on ending the idea of encounters with school bullies as a “rite of passage” extends from the classroom level right up to the White House. With the conclusion of recent studies demonstrating that bullying has a greater impact on the educational success of minority and at-risk students of all income levels, the elimination of bullying from all schools seems to be a priority.
As teachers, we are better equipped to handle bullying situations in our schools and better trained to recognize when it may be happening to students we might otherwise have assumed were safe. But is there still more you would like to know about how to handle bullying? And are there tips you would like to share with your fellow teachers for spotting and ending bullying effectively?
I start with very young children. The younger the better. We take about what a bully is and how they make others feel. The children get so if there is a bully in the class then they tell them they are being a bully and they need to stop. My Christmas I do not have to call the child out the others have already done it for me.
I teach the only names used in my class is the child’s real name. The magic words are good hands, good feet and good mouths. This pretty much covers it all. We take a picture at the beginning of the year for each statement. Since they are in the picture they respect it more.