None of this is to say educators prefer ignorance. When I called Lynn, the same school counselor I wept to when Abby took me on in the third grade, she was thrilled to hear from me. A slight woman with a globe of brown curls, a freckled face, and the presence of a center forward, she hugged me, asked me about my brother (himself no stranger to this office), then settled back into her chair. "The biggest difficulty I encounter, the hardest thing to work through, is this awful thing that girls do to each other," she said, crossing her legs and frowning. "I have been waiting twenty-five years for some-one that would explain this to me."
Like Lynn, some educators have chosen to confront alternative aggressions despite the shroud of silence that surrounds the topic. For Amber it is the memory of her own victimization that moves her. An elementary-school teacher in Mississippi, she sat with me one day in her classroom and told me about it: "I was short, had buck teeth and glasses. I know how it feels, and it's not gone away, and it's been twenty years. It's never gone away. I'm the most insecure person in the whole world. No one in my classroom would probably know that because I'm always telling them that we can do anything. I still, you know, I still can hear those kids calling me names and not accepting me because of my looks, my physical appearance."
Amber hawkishly forbids verbal cruelty in her classroom. She recalled escorting a boy and girl into the hall after they traded insults and speaking to them frankly about her own life. "It hurts, doesn't it?" she said. "I've been there. I had buck teeth. They may not be now, but [the teasing] hurt me." When she takes girls outside, she often gives them equal time to tell their stories.
In schools where physical violence is common, psychological aggression can take a back seat. School professionals triage student battles, focusing on the most violent altercations. Unfortunately, this is like waiting until a fire has fully consumed a house to call the fire department. As I show in chapter eight, girls' brawls are virtually always the endgame of a drama that began beneath the radar, using weapons like relational aggression, gossip, negative body language, and so on. The aggression may become visible with a shove or yank, but it almost never began there.
creating a safe school culture
A classroom sensitive to alternative aggressions is managed by an educator who openly discusses its different forms. An educator may use lessons with stories of children who experience alternative aggressions. She may openly discuss her own history with bullying. He may use instruction time to talk about the social dynamics of the class. She may work with colleagues to share effective discipline strategies and discuss the social climate of the grade. He may take time out to praise acts of truth telling and assertiveness in the classroom.
None of this can occur sustainably without the support and authority of an administrator. The decision to create a safe school culture must be made at the top and integrated into every part of a community. In the next section, I outline the structural changes needed to reduce bullying in schools. Much of my thinking in this area has been guided by the work of Dan Olweus and the Olweus Bullying Prevention Program, a rigorously researched and evaluated anti-bullying initiative for schools. From where educators should stand in the hallways to how lunchtimes can be made safe for all, the wide-ranging program works with every level of a school community and attempts to redefine the norms associated with bullying itself.
Develop an anti-bullying policy. There is no excuse for a school to lack an anti-bullying policy. It's like not having a fire safety plan. Although many states now require public schools to develop an anti-bullying policy, several states still do not; private schools are under no obligation at all.
The purpose of a policy is both symbolic and practical. Its existence sends a clear signal to the community about the school's core values and priorities. Knowing a policy is in place authorizes educators to use their judgment with confidence as they manage their classrooms. A good policy also stipulates protocol—that is, a systematic way of doing things—which lets the community know that cases will be handled on their merits and rules applied consistently, without regard to family, class, race, or gender.
School anti-bullying policies and handbooks must be revised to reflect the new research on alternative aggressions. Schools need to define clearly what constitutes aggressive behavior among all students such as rumor spreading, alliance building, and severe episodes of nonverbal aggression. For example, it might acknowledge that intentionally damaging another child's relationships is a form of actionable aggression.
Policy development should occur among individuals who represent different constituencies in the school: students, parents, staff, faculty, and administrators. A robust policy will not only designate unacceptable behaviors but affirm the school's values and desired behavior across its entire community.
The best school policies attend to electronic aggression. In the twenty-first century, it is impossible to keep students safe at school without holding them responsible for cyberbullying. The vast majority of schools decline to intervene in these episodes because they occur off school grounds. Yet anyone who has spent five minutes in a school knows that what happens off campus comes back into the school the next day, disrupting the community. Conflicts intensify, students can't focus, and school counselors and administrators are brought in to clean up the mess. Without the ability to hold students responsible for their actions, a vacuum is created where students can act out against each other without deterrent.
While there are important legal issues of free speech to consider here, it is no longer acceptable to argue that anti-bullying policy remain squarely within the school's gates. Cyberbullying is a game changer; it literally shatters the walls between school and home. There is no escape. As Wired Safety founder Parry Aftab has said, cyberbullying follows you everywhere: home, to summer camp, to Grandma's house.
Increasingly, schools are arguing that students must be held accountable for what happens off campus because of the school resources required to manage the aftereffects of cyberbullying. This is the right direction for schools to be heading.
Develop a consistent intervention protocol for educators. When a community has not come to agreement about what bullying means and how it should be addressed, enforcement can be wildly erratic. Consistent intervention with girls—indeed, with any student—is crucial to creating a safe school climate. As Dan Olweus and Susan Limber have written, "Students need to experience that adults in your school will address bullying in roughly the same way, using the same rules and similar guidelines for use of positive and negative consequences. This ... assures students who are bullied that adults will take action to stop bullying."95
When only certain students get in trouble, it sends the message that some students live above the law. At a public high school in the South, a cheerleader was caught with marijuana in her bag on a school trip. The squad's sponsor, who was also a teacher at the school, asked the assistant principal to remove the girl from the squad. Legal charges were pending, but the administrator refused. The girl's father was a prominent community figure and booster club donor, and her brother was the quarterback on the football team.
Intermittent enforcement erodes a student's sense that she is safe at school. This invariably adds to student anxiety, makes kids think they can break the rules with certain adults, and leads to a pervasive loss of faith in adults at the school. Administrators cannot be people pleasers. The most effective school leaders are willing to risk losing a prominent family in order to keep their communities safe.
Enforcement may be inconsistent because educators do not know how to respond to peer aggression. Graduate schools of education rarely train teachers in this area, so administrators should never assume that a teacher simply "knows" how to reprimand and discipline a student.96 It is simply unfair to assume educators are ignorant or unwilling to address bullying. Staff need training to know what to say and how to say it. When they do not feel empowered to intervene, staff send the message that bullying is acceptable and will not be dis
ciplined by authority figures at the school.
When I visit schools, educators ask me all the time for scripts and strategies to deal with an aggressive girl. Many of them seem to think extraordinary or unusual tricks are required to intervene effectively. This is a myth. In fact, dealing with girls is not all that different from how many staff already address more conventional forms of aggression or rule breaking.
Imagine witnessing an act of aggression you have seen several times before—say, a nasty remark or one student shoving another. What would you do? Most likely, you would follow a set of steps you have grown accustomed to in similar situations. Perhaps you would stop the behavior, make sure the student is okay, send the offending student to the assistant principal, and so on.
To respond to visible alternative aggressions, I recommend educators adopt some combination of these steps:
1. Stop the behavior and ensure the target is safe. As I have said elsewhere in this book, some of the most aggressive girls are downright angelic around adults. When confronted, many girls (and plenty of boys) will revert to denial, or the claim they were "just kidding." The Olweus program advises staff to avoid giving students an opportunity to reject their interpretation of events. Instead of asking, "What are you doing?" or "What did you just say?" don't hesitate: "I saw what you were doing and that is unacceptable behavior at this school." If girls reply that it was a joke—even if the target seems to agree—hold your ground: "It doesn't matter how you meant it. What you said is not okay."
2. Define the violation. When it comes to alternative aggressions, you may need to explain why the behavior is considered wrong in the first place. For example, some students may not understand that threatening not to be someone's friend, or convincing others not to sit with a peer, is a form of aggression. It can be useful to compare the behavior to one they already take seriously. "When you roll your eyes at her every time she raises her hand, it's hurtful. It's like calling her a mean name."
When dealing with a group of girls, do not talk to them together. Instead, speak to each one in quick succession,97 and do not allow the girls to congregate outside an office while they wait (otherwise, they may "get their stories straight").
3. Outline the consequences, if any; OR refer the student to a disciplinary official. Every situation is different, so consequences will vary depending on the circumstances. In addition, consequences do not always have to be punitive. Students can be asked to complete written reflection assignments that ask them to explain their action, its impact, and their feelings about their behavior. Alternatively, you can ask students to write a letter of apology to the target. The point is to not let the behavior go. Students should know that aggression comes at a cost.
Since so much of girls' aggression occurs without detection, denial of bad behavior is rampant. Yet a she-said, she-said situation does not necessarily mean you have to back down. Let's say a student has been implicated in using a nasty code name to describe another girl. There is no proof, yet you feel pretty sure it happened. You can tell the student you are not blaming her but still weigh in on the behavior itself: "Using a code name to talk about someone is really hurtful, and it's the kind of thing we don't tolerate at this school. Can you imagine how embarrassed and put down that girl would feel if she found out?"
Then, you can talk about the "hypothetical" consequences for engaging in the behavior, in the event someone is caught doing it: "I just want you to know that if someone did do that, and I found out, that person would definitely get a detention and phone call home."
New Jersey school counselor Kim Kaminski asks a clever question when a girl denies wrongdoing or seems to withhold incriminating information: "When I ask the other person about this, what do you think she's going to say?" The question, Kaminski says, can have a fairly magical effect on quiet or stubborn girls.
If educators are uncertain about the limits of their permission to intervene, they should be advised to ask the administrator responsible for discipline. Students can read the hesitation of staff. Adolescent girls are exquisitely gifted at talking their way out of trouble, and staff may back down as a result. Educators' confidence will increase with the knowledge that they are fully authorized to step in.
4. Communicate expectations for future positive behavior. Discipline is rarely effective when its recipient is left feeling hopeless or shamed. It is always important to give a student an opportunity to redeem herself. This can be done by emphasizing a student's prior displays of good character, or by suggesting a specific action the student can take to correct the impression that has been left by her negative behavior.
This moment has the potential to become the point where a girl is told to "be nice" to the other girl. Better, instead, to emphasize the need for respect. "Nice" is a loaded word for girls. For adults, "nice" means polite and respectful. To girls, "nice" means being friends with that person. This is usually not feasible (or fair). Moreover, it is in part the pressure girls get to be "nice" that drives their behavior underground in the first place. This is an opportunity to talk with a girl about what respect means and looks like in practice. Girls do not have to be friends with every student, but they do owe their peers respect.
5. Report or record the incident. Research shows that when educators report bullying incidents, the situation is more likely to be addressed. If you are not already mandated by law to do so, require staff to report aggressive incidents to the school counselor or assistant principal. It is vitally important for incidents of bullying and aggression to be flagged and moved to the top of an administrator's list. If too much time passes between a report and an intervention, it may be too late to make an impact.
Each week a summary incident report can be circulated in writing to staff or reviewed in a staff meeting. Reports do not always have to lead to action; they can also serve as an information-sharing device that activates support for a struggling student. For example, if an art teacher reads a report that one of her students is being bullied, she may reach out to the student, take care to recognize her work, or offer to let her collaborate on a special project.
Every staff or team meeting should make time to review "red flag" or struggling students. This evaluation needs to cover both bullies and targets. When more educators are aware of who needs help, they can work together and provide the necessary support or discipline.
Train the entire school staff. All individuals employed by a school, whether they work in the cafeteria, drive a bus, or clean the building, should be trained to understand what bullying looks like and what to do when they see it. Most bullying and aggression occurs in places with the least adult supervision, which is everywhere a teacher may not be. This includes bathrooms, carpool lanes, cafeterias, buses, and hallways. Making a school safe is an effort that must be undertaken by every adult in the community.
Make sure students know the rules. Every student at your school should know what bullying is, what to do when bullying is observed, and what the consequences are for engaging in it. The rules should be conveyed in the context of discussions, suggested later in the chapter, or accompany other learning experiences such as school assemblies. Making rules or exercising authority "because we say so" never goes very far with kids. They need to understand why the rules exist and have an opportunity to reflect on how they pertain to their own wellness and safety.
Separate the roles of counselor and disciplinarian. School counselors and clinicians working at a school cannot be tasked with both counseling students and taking disciplinary action against them. Unfortunately, in understaffed schools, this is precisely what happens. Students need to feel safe approaching a counselor, without worry that disclosures will lead to punishment. Asking a counselor to play both roles puts him in a compromised position and makes his student support services highly conditional. Under such terms, students are far less inclined to visit a counselor and get the help they need before a situation worsens.
Take social-emotional learning (SEL) seriously. The core skills of
SEL include "recognizing and managing our emotions, developing caring and concern for others, establishing positive relationships, making responsible decisions, and handling challenging situations constructively and ethically. They are the skills that allow children to calm themselves when angry, make friends, resolve conflicts respectfully, and make ethical and safe choices." Some SEL-focused activities might include exercises where students practice identifying emotions, explore what it means to be a good or true friend, and devise strategies for telling a bully to back down.98
SEL is not about only classes or skills. It also refers to the core values and priorities of a school. When administrators take a social-emotional approach to their leadership, safety becomes a priority that is embedded in the operation and culture of the school. These school leaders do not just assign lunch periods randomly, but purposefully create lunch periods and seating arrangements that separate targets from aggressors. They oversee school counselors who place vulnerable students in nurturing teachers' classrooms. They separate the students who create more trouble when they are paired. Emotional safety is seen as a way of life, not an afterthought; steps are consistently preventative and do not come only in response to crisis.
With its evidence-based success, the SEL field is finally gaining the widespread credibility it deserves. A host of studies find that a child's SEL is directly linked to her academic and social success. Despite these findings, there is often little time available during the school day devoted to SEL. As I wrote in chapter ten, relationships are the fourth "R." The skills for safe and ethical relationships must be taught, not assumed. When students have the tools to manage their feelings and relationships, and make ethical choices, they are less likely to be involved in bullying.
Provide guidance to parents and staff about how to communicate. Bullying episodes have a lifespan; that is, the actual incident is only the beginning of a longer process. As administrators and parents become involved, the need for protocol and clear expectations about behavior does not evaporate. If anything, having a system in place becomes more important than ever. Parameters on the school-parent relationship hold all players to a standard of behavior that can be easily left behind when emotions become intense. In 2010 "vigilante parents" was a popular term, as sure a sign as any of the need for boundaries between educators and parents.
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