It’s a worldwide problem. Bullying has many manifestations, many forms, and many victims. But they all have one thing in common: people get hurt and it needs to stop.
As a teacher, you’ve noticed different forms of bullying throughout your career. Maybe you’ve done some research and attended workshops to help deal with the problem. Surely you agree that bullying must stop, and that you yourself must be part of the solution. Here are some practical tips that you as a teacher can use. Learn how to stop bullying in schools, and you can influence your school for the better just by learning How to prevent bullying.
How to prevent bullying inside the classroom: As a teacher, your highest level of interaction with your students will be in class, where the focus will be on your content material. However, bullying is more likely to occur outside of class or between classes when students focus on interacting with each other. Despite this disparity, there is a lot you can do within your classroom to fight bullying.
How to stop Bullying in Schools: Preventive methods include:
- Encourage peer-to-peer relationships. According to Humanity Against Local Terrorism .helping students develop positive relationships lets them work through problems rather than resorting to bullying.
- Have students work in groups or pairs to foster collaboration and cooperative learning. Students who have more experience working cooperatively in the classroom will be more capable of working out difficult situations outside theclassroom.
- Model behaviors and attitudes that are conducive to self-worth and to valuing others.
- Model positive relationships. You have more influence on your students than you realize, and your attitudes toward treatment of others, toward bullying, and toward ethical and unethical behavior will impact students either for good or ill.
- Encourage positive leadership.
- Be consistent in rewarding positive behavior and punishing negative behavior between students. Have clear standards and consequences and stand by them.
How to stop Bullying in Schools: Outside the classroom:
You have various avenues of influence outside the classroom as well. These include school-wide policies and opportunities outside school, such as extracurricular interactions with students and encouraging parental involvement.
How to prevent bullying school-wide:
Your school is sure to have anti-bullying materials. The administration may have already implemented an anti-bullying plan. If not, contact your administrators about how you can help put such a plan in place. Ways you can use resources provided by the school include:
- Anti-bullying rules. According to stopbullying.gov, your school may have a student covenant, code of conduct, or other set of rules with a section on individual rights and/or treatment of others. These rules can be enforced school-wide to help prevent bullying.
- Stopbullying.gov also recommends the establishment and use of a reporting system to ensure that rules are upheld and enforced. The system should be easy to use in order to encourage accurate reporting.
- Assessments- use school-wide surveys to assess how much of a problem bullying is in your school. Then you can use them at regular intervals later on to asses the effectiveness of the measures you’re using to prevent it. Use the results of your assessments to continually improve your anti-bullying measures.
How to prevent bullying outside school:
Connections not specifically associated with the classroom or school administration are important as well. These include:
How to prevent bullying with parental involvement.
The more you can get parents and students themselves involved in the cause, the more likely it is you’ll be on the winning side. Parents can help
- by working through volunteering, PTA, and other opportunities to improve the school climate
- by being involved in their own children’s school experiences and providing motivation
- by teaching their children how to have positive relationships and not to be bullies. According to kidshealth.org, parents can try to understand the reasons their children are displaying bullying behavior, and can help them work through it.
The place where children should feel safe, unfortunately, is often the place where bullying begins.In addition, Stopbullying.com suggests that students can learn how to stop bullying in school and participate in several aspects for example:
- by contributing their experiences
- by taking positive leadership roles
- by spreading the word among other students about bully prevention
- by helping develop rules and policies about bullying. If students are involved in the rule-making process they will feel like they “own” the rules and will be more motivated to uphold them.
How to stop Bullying in Schools: Extracurricular interactions with students
- Your behavior is an influence on students inside and outside the classroom. Make sure your relationships with others are always a positive model. Students will be watching you whenever possible- you never know when you may be able to influence them in the right direction.
- Show an interest in students’ lives by attending their events (sports, concerts, and such) and getting to know their extracurricular interests. This will show them you care for them, furthering your influence, and help their self-image and motivation.
More on How to Prevent Bullying at School
The place where children should feel safe, unfortunately, is often the place where bullying begins. Parents need to make time to talk with their child on a regular basis. Bullying usually doesn’t start out of the blue. It is often a problem that builds over time. By communicating with our children on a daily basis concerning what happens at recess, during lunch, and with their
friends, we will have a much better chance of discovering the beginning of a bullying situation before it escalates.
Discuss bullying and its negative effects with your child before he or she starts the school year. Even young children can be taught that it’s inappropriate to pick on or make fun of others. Be aware of the school’s bullying policy. Make sure your child understands that sort of behavior is unacceptable and who he or she can go to at the school for help. What exactly bullying is and what it isn’t must be clearly defined, especially for younger children.
Unfortunately, administrators and teachers sometimes feel as if they’re walking on eggshells when it comes to learning how to prevent bullying now. They’re afraid to accuse the offenders and sometimes find it difficult to deal with the parents of a bully. To remedy this situation using knowledge on how to prevent bullying, there are several things that schools can do. For starters, children should be under adult supervision at all times during school hours. There should be a counselor or another teacher on staff that students can talk to regarding bullying. There should be programs in place to educate children. Examples could include having students work on banners or slogans to hang on the walls and promoting bully awareness days. If a child’s school does not have these types of programs in place to deal with bullying, a parent should attempt to work through the school board, the PTA, or other school associations to start them. It is up to the parent to get the community running on educating teens and children on how to prevent bullying.
Remember, the more people you can get involved, the more you can do. According to the American Psychological Association,the best anti-bullying efforts involve your entire school Spread the word about how to stop bullying in schools, and you can change the whole community for the better simply by learning How to prevent bullying now!
