Proactive Behavioral-Management

1. Kick off your anti-bullying campaign with an administrator or designated facilitator visiting each classroom or with an informational assembly with the purpose of introducing the concept of bullying, including what a bully, victim or target, bystander, or rescuer is, and that your school will be embarking on a campaign to “create a bully-free school.”

2. Hold a staff meeting to explain various elements of the program to your staff, including any surveys you wish to use, referral forms, rules, consequences, etc.

3. Distribute a set of anti-bullying rules (in manual) to each classroom, and go over them with the students in detail. Explain the consequences of breaking one of the rules in detail. You will have to decide on a set of consequences. Rules and consequences should be uniform throughout the school. Post the rules and consequences in each classroom.

4. Send a letter home to parents (sample is in manual) to introduce the notion that you are committed to creating a bully-free school. You might include the anti-bullying rules and your consequences as attachments to the letter.

5. Form an anti-bullying group or club. The club will meet once or twice a week before school, during lunch, or after school. The club should have not more than 20 students in it unless you have two or more people leading it. You may want to require that students bring home permission slips that a parent/guardian must sign to give that child permission to participate in the club. Students can sign up for the club on a first-come, first-serve basis. Make it clear that students do not have to be the “bullies” to join the club. The club will be more successful if it is not solely comprised of “bullies.” You will then naturally achieve a cross-section of bullies, targets or victims, bystanders, and rescuers in your group. All will benefit from participation in the club. The members will decide upon a name for their club (i.e. Bully Busters, No Bullies Allowed Zone).

Some possible club activities are: teaching strategies and techniques students can use for dealing with a bully, informative sessions that teach about bullying, activities that foster children’s friendship/relationship skills, teacher-led discussions, role-playing, writing and producing role-plays or a relevant play to be performed in an assembly or in individual classrooms, practicing social skills, learning about respect, responsibility, and compliance, participating in activities that increase students’ self confidence and self image, watching relevant documentaries or movies, participating in community projects or service, doing lesson plans from packet (you have the packet with lesson plans).

Ideally you will have generated great student interest in the club. You can then rotate the whole group of students out after 1 or 2 months, and then start a new group.

6. Simultaneously, you will continue to run your school-wide anti-bullying education campaign that all your students are a part of. You have already introduced the concept of bullying to your school, and the anti-bullying rules and your consequences are in effect. The following are suggestions for some activities you can run in your school-wide anti-bullying campaign:

• Write a press release that you send out to local newspapers (a small, concise article that explains your school’s new anti-bullying campaign). A press release can also be sent for an individual event.

• Hold your fist annual anti-bullying poster contest. Each homeroom or class comes up with an anti-bullying poster. Give the contest a lot of hype. Choose a deadline; collect all the posters. Have all the posters displayed in one place. Invite various individuals to come to judge the poster for first, second, and third place. You might invite the superintendent, another principal in your district, an elected town official, a board member, someone from the police of fire departments, someone from your local newspaper. Display the winning posters prominently, and display all the posters throughout the building. You may want to hold a pizza party for the three classes that come in first, second, and third. You also may want to hook first, second, and third place ribbons onto their respective posters.

• Run a different contest. Have each class create an anti-bullying pledge that has the chance of being adopted school-wide (sample pledges are in manual). Again, choose your judges. Select the pledge you wish to be adopted. Then have a special “Adopt Our Anti-Bullying Pledge” day after you have selected the pledge you like. Invite various guests to be present when your entire student body “takes the pledge.”

• Create a “Hands and Words Are Not For Hurting Wall.” This can be one large bulletin board, or individual bulletin boards displayed outside each classroom. Students will trace their hands on construction paper. On one hand the students will write the school’s pledge, and then sign their name under the pledge. On the other hand, they will write one thing they will commit to doing differently to “stop the bullying.”

• Have the students create a box (or more than one if you want each classroom to have its own box) where any student can put something in writing on a piece of paper about a problem he or she is having dealing with bullying. Someone then will have to be designated who reads the notes and responds to them. One of the worst things that can happen is if a child reports a bullying incident to someone in authority in your school, and nothing happens as a result of the reporting.

• Hold parent workshops that deal with bullying that explain the concept of bullying, what your school is doing about the problem, warning signs that may indicate to parents that their child may be a bully or a victim (in the manual), tips for parents on keeping their children bully-free (in the manual), and tips on how parents can bring out the best in their children (in the manual). These workshops can be part of your PTO night, or on a specified night for parents devoted only to this subject.