Educators can be difference-making—even life-saving—advocates for bullied students and potential bullying victims
February 5, 2025
February 5, 2025
“No one deserves to be bullied,” says former President Barack Obama. “Each of us deserves the freedom to pursue our own version of happiness.”
Unfortunately, there are still so many who need to hear and absorb that message. Bullying is an age-old and sad symptom of human behavior, in both young people and adults. Those who want to perceive themselves as strong mistreat those they perceive as weak, and it can leave lasting emotional scars on everyone—victims, bystanders, and the bullies themselves. Bullying goes on in a multitude of ways in and around our schools: Kids make fun of their peers, call them names, and insult them; they spread rumors about them; they get physical and shove, hit, and do other forms of violence to them; they purposefully exclude them from activities; they damage their property; and they misrepresent or attack them in cyberspace, to name a few.
Whatever the method, it’s never OK. It’s scary, it does significant damage—and, as educators and human beings, we must do everything we can to stop it.
One of the best way school staff members can do that is to become known as an advocate for students who are bullied or seem especially susceptible to being victims. If students know that teachers and ESPs in their school are there for them, it can go a long way toward changing key areas of a building’s climate for everyone.
Here are some suggestions for being the kind of advocate that can make that change a reality, adapted from material created by researchers at the National Education Association:
Be Present and Available to Observe and Listen
Bullying can happen anywhere, but we know that it commonly takes place in areas on school grounds with little or no supervision, such as in the hallways between classes or before or after school. Making your presence known in areas where students are during transition times can make a huge difference. Just by being there, you change the dynamics. And, if an incident does happen, you are there to see it with your own eyes and intervene immediately.
Students Can’t Learn in Fear
Would you be able to do your school-based job effectively if you were nervous or frightened about your safety? To learn well, students must be provided with a safe school climate that is conducive to learning. Bullying is a huge deterrent to that kind of climate. In education, we sometimes feel that there are many things that impact student learning that are out of our control, but bullying is not one of those things. A student who is being bullied at school is being denied an opportunity to learn. We have a unique ability to change this, to stop the negative effects on students’ well-being and their ability to learn, and ultimately, in some cases, to save their lives. Let’s not waste this opportunity.
Model the Behavior You Expect
Educators may feel a need to establish and command authority; however, there is a way to do this while modeling the behavior you expect from your students. By scolding, yelling, or demanding things, you’re exhibiting behaviors that you don’t want your students to emulate. Being self-aware and exuding a positive, respectful tone is essential in showing children how they should treat others.
Language Matters
When intervening in a situation or talking about bullying, the words you use are extremely important. Labels such as “bully” and “victim” can be harmful, and may leave both parties feeling helpless. By labeling students, you send a message that their behaviors can’t be changed over time. Instead, StopBullying.gov suggests terms such as “the child who bullied” and “the child who was bullied.” Instead of telling a child that they are a bully, make them understand that their actions in that moment are harmful and inappropriate—and could eventually put them in serious situations that lead to extreme consequences.
Bullying is a Solvable Problem
Expand your advocacy for bullied students by ensuring that your school has a comprehensive bullying prevention plan in place. Such a plan should enable educators to have a process in place for learning how to recognize bullying behaviors, how to intervene appropriately when they witness an incident happening, and how to promote prevention so incidents don’t happen in the first place.
Educate Students
Students have plenty of insight: Involve them as peer advocates. Get their input when developing a bullying prevention plan. Integrate the topic of bullying and how to deal with it into your curriculum.
To raise their awareness, consider having students engage in role-plays on defusing a bullying situation and engaging bystanders. Create opportunities for students to work together, such as assignments that require sharing and collaboration. An anti-bullying curriculum should encourage students to report bullying and harassment to an adult.
Where and When Do Students Feel Unsafe?
Find and use school climate surveys with staff and students. Such information-gathering can help identify areas for improvement. A positive school climate is conducive to less bullying and more learning.
You can also conduct a mapping activity. This involves making copies of the school map and asking all staff to indicate where they think students do and do not feel safe. The same activity should be done with students. Mapping these “hot spots” is a very effective indicator of where bullying could be occurring. Strategies must be implemented to remedy these “hot spots,” such as more adult supervision on the stairwells or better lighting in darker hallways.
Bullying is most likely to occur in schools where there is a lack of adult supervision during the day, so let’s make wise changes to staff assignments and keep students safe.
Encourage bystanders.
If you witness a bullying incident in which bystanders stood up, reinforce their efforts. Let them know that you admire their courage and thank them for speaking up, which helps themselves and other students. If the bystanders did not intervene, give them examples of how to intervene appropriately the next time that they see bullying (e.g., get help from an adult, tell the person to stop). Research points to the important role bystanders can play during a bullying incident and in changing the school climate.
Stand Up
Let your voice be heard with a call to action. Organize your local union members, as well as non-members and parents, around bullying prevention. Get bullying on the map; ensure that space is carved out to address the topic at local meetings and state conferences. Track changes to your state’s anti-bullying law. Also, review state education agency and district policies related to bullying and seek revisions when you think they’re necessary. Remember that parents of bullied students can be strong allies and advocates. Continue to make sure the bullied students are supported well beyond an incident. Make sure they have the resources they need. Reach out to other staff members who can provide guidance and emotional support to students.
Zero Out Zero Tolerance
Zero tolerance policies hinder bullying prevention efforts. Such policies generally involve suspension or exclusion from school and are related to increased dropout rates and discriminatory application of school discipline practices. Also, there is no evidence that removing students from school makes a positive contribution to school safety. We do know that students who bully need pro-social models. We can advocate for bullied students by working to develop and/or utilize bullying prevention programs that do work, such as:
If It’s Broken, It Does Need Fixing
A large part of being an advocate for bullied students is to not accept the status quo. Be informed about measures you and/or your school may be using that are known not to work, or that make a situation worse.
For example, peer mediation and conflict resolution are valuable strategies that do work in other instances, but they are not the right fit for dealing with bullying. The message that both parties are partly right and partly wrong is inappropriate. Students who bully must receive the message that their behavior is wrong and won’t be tolerated. The fact that peer mediation exacerbates the imbalance of power between the student who bullies and their target also cannot be ignored. Speak up for changing your school’s current way of addressing bullying if you believe it could be done better. The research is out there; encourage your colleagues to be open to change.
Develop ESP-Specific Strategies
ESPs, such as bus drivers, cafeteria workers, and paraeducators, are likely to be present where bullying tends to happen, so they need concrete strategies to use during an incident. Be sure to involve all school staff in the development of a comprehensive school-wide prevention plan as well as in all training. ESP-specific resources are also needed.
Evaluate Annually and Sustain Efforts Over Time
Monitor classrooms and school grounds to be sure that bullying policies are being followed. Consistency of effort is essential, and preventing bullying requires a long-term commitment.
Bullying is a Social Justice Issue
Both VEA and NEA’s vision and mission statements are rooted in social justice. Social justice includes a vision of society in which all members are physically and psychologically safe and secure. Bullying is a behavior designed to oppress another person, and it’s our duty to do everything we possible can to assure a safe learning environment and social justice for all students.
Avoid these common mistakes:
Source: stopbullying.gov.
The average pay of Virginia public school teachers in 2023-24 was $65,830. That is $4,260 below the national average of $70,090.
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