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"No Bully partnered with our School District over the past year to develop and implement our Bully-Free board policy and program - we couldn't have done it without their help. They played a vital role in enabling us to design and adopt an empathy-driven program that encourages students at all our school sites to be advocates for the well-being of each other." |
Running a district-wide anti-bullying initiative
Students repeatedly say that bullying is the greatest problem that they face and that their schools do a poor job in stopping it. Bullying leads to unsafe campuses, physical and psychological harm to students, and academic underperformance. School districts have the opportunity through launching a district wide anti-bullying initiative to benefit the lives of many students and create the safety, acceptance and respect they need.
There are four steps to launching a successful anti-bullying initiative. The No Bully program for school districts helps you every stage of the way.
Step 1: Create a District Anti-bullying Task Force
It takes just one person in a school district that cares enough about school bullying to begin the process of change. But a school district cannot make change happen alone. You need to ignite the enthusiasm of the teachers, parents and student at each school site if change is really to catch fire.
When a school district asks No Bully how best to run an anti-bullying initiative, we strongly recommend that you bring together representatives from each school site to form a district-wide taskforce. The role of the taskforce is to share the work of making the district wide anti-bullying initiative a success. Individual members lead the process of change within their school communities, and then return to the taskforce to share their successes and troubleshoot their challenges.
Step 2: Develop an anti-bullying policy that promotes a positive vision
The majority of school districts are still without an anti-bullying policy. And the few policies in existence are often bland and ineffectual. The lack of a policy leads to inconsistent responses to bullying by teachers and administrators and increased litigation risk as districts fail in their duty to provide a safe educational environment, reasonable levels of supervision and protection against harassment in all its forms.
When a school district partners with No Bully, we act as a catalyst and resource for the taskforce as it leads the anti-bullying initiative.
- We coach taskforce members in how to gather images of a positive school culture from their communities and to weave these into a district statement of vision. It is this shared vision that will drive your initiative and mobilize change in your schools.
- Members get to access and adapt the No Bully model anti-bullying policy to the particular needs of the district, placing your district in alignment with best practices. Your anti-bullying policy needs to contain social interventions that really work. No Bully will show you how to incorporate the Solution Team™ response to bullying to help the targets of bullying gain acceptance and respect from their peers.
- Students need to learn the skills to relate in positive ways. No Bully helps you identify time-efficient ways of teaching anti-bullying modules and create a laddered curriculum from the lowest grade to the top.
Step 3: Train your teachers in how to address bullying
Teachers have a crucial role to play in creating caring and bully-free classrooms. Yet few credentialing programs train teachers in how to do this. No Bully fills this gap with a series of teacher in-service workshops.
Addressing Bullying 101. The first step to addressing bullying is for all adults who work in the schools to understand what bullying is and to prevent it whenever it occurs. In this introductory workshop, teachers become consistent in their understanding of bullying and the developmental issues that can cause bullying to intensify in early and middle adolescence. We raise awareness of the diversity issues of race, class and non-compliance with gender expectations that so often underpin these student behaviors. Teachers frequently report to us that they freeze when confronted with bullying. In order to counter this, we use small group discussion, scenarios and role-plays to practice immediate verbal interventions to bullying.
How to Facilitate a Solution Team. No Bully developed the Solution Team™ response to bullying as a non-punitive way of resolving entrenched bullying dynamics. Under the Solution Team response, an adult facilitator pulls together a team of students to solve the bullying of one of their peers. This workshop trains key staff members from each school site in how to be a Solution Team facilitator. Solution Team has proven so effective that many of the schools and school districts trained by No Bully have made it the centerpiece of their anti-bullying policy.
Certification in the Solution Team. In this follow-up workshop, Solution Team facilitators take their skills to a higher level by troubleshooting bullying situations that they have encountered at their school sites. Participants are trained in communicating with challenging parents whose children are involved in bullying. We certify participants who attend both Solution Team workshops and can demonstrate that they have successfully completed three Solution Team interventions at their school site.
Step 4: Promote and celebrate the unique culture of your schools
The most effective way to end student bullying is to promote the positive values and culture of each of your school sites and to provide your students with the skills to relate in positive ways. This takes planning, dedication and commitment. The No Bully program for school districts shows you how to plan for long-term change.
The culmination of planning is a weeklong celebration at each school site of its positive culture and ideals. This can serve as the launch of your anti-bullying initiative. Use this week in subsequent years to remind students about bullying, how this stands in the way of your school’s vision and what students can do to make their campus bully-free.
Next steps
The mission of No Bully is to help every school and school district become bully-free. Please contact us to discuss how our program can help your school district run a successful anti-bullying initiative.
For a free initial consultation, call 415-820-3956. Or e-mail us at info@nobully.com