School staff who have been trained by No Bully to lead Solution Teams® do things differently. They bring together teams of students involved in bullying, including the bully, the bully-followers and positive leaders from the peer group of the student who is being bullied. Solution Team leaders mirror the language of the target, describing to Solution Team students the actual words and actions as the target experiences them. Solution Team students upon hearing the actual experience in a blame-free, label-free setting are able to access their empathy for the target without being defensive or protective about themselves as individuals. In such a stance, Solution Team students can own the behavior and language they have used. From the adult lens, we know this language is race-based, or anti-gay language, or derogatory of size, learning differences and other aspects of our diverse school community. Solution Team students know, when they hear it, that the intended purpose of the language was painfully effective, and now they are being given the opportunity to “own”, self-check, self-boundary their behavior with new choices.

Student solutions often fall into two categories—
1. What can they cease to do; and
2. What can they do differently.

Often the behaviors that are ceased are the very bullying described by the target and often these go unspoken in the Solution Team discussion process. What are most often discussed are the replacement behaviors.
Don’t be fooled by the simplicity of the solution sets students create.
Simplicity is elegant and it works! Here are some” Before” and “After” comparisons or some Target experience and Solutions that resulted in success for all Team members ( including the target):

ELEMENTARY SCHOOL Before: “Gay boy”, “Whitie”, “Four Eyes”, pushed into bushes
Solution: Say hello in the morning, include in a game at recess, ask him to work with me in class, say nice things, help him when people say mean things Results: Target feels included, reports no more name calling

Before: “Calls my clothes gay”, calls me sissy, I get in fights all the time
Solution: Compliment his work in class, don’t whisper about him, share the ball, don’t fight about rules for four square and football, stop name calling, defend him
Results : Reports being happier and calmer, doesn’t have to defend himself with fights, gets along with friends better, easier time working in class.

Reflections on equity
In school systems, “Equity” refers to the intentional educational practice of providing whatever services, instruction supports and teaching and learning strategies are necessary to create academic success for students based upon the different strengths they bring from their cultural, racial, ethnic, family composition and ability profile. If, and we do, need to and are talking about “Equity” by default we are acknowledging that there are “inequities” in our educational systems. Indeed, when, as educators we examine the social conditions at school that influence, support or impede students success we begin to talk about how invisibility or biased perceptions or institutional systems empower our students differently based upon race, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, family configuration and learning differences, to name just a few. These categories are often described as our “diversity”; an educational “catch-22” as it in and of itself reflects the societal bias as to who is defined in the norm and who in the diversity from that norm.

Solution Team adds a new set of positive reinforcement to a disciplinary system that can unwittingly sabotage itself and reinforce the very bullying it seeks to end. Current school systems have evolved disciplinary processes that are by and large based upon punitive measures and punishment and often lack the opportunity for students to be educated with replacement behaviors. Solution Team/Solution Coaching reintegrates a positive, strength-based student-empowering process to disciplinary processes in school. Teams of both pro-social and bullying-engaged students are convened in 3 short meetings to address the needs of a student targeted by bullying. In my experience as a Solution team facilitator, the hate-based and derogatory content of bullying mirrors student language about sexual orientation (anti-gay), race, size, intelligence, gender expression. I have witnessed success in teams ending the negative experience of the target in every case I have worked on.

Lynn Bravewomon is a Safe and Inclusive Schools Specialist and Coordinator of the Hayward Unified School District’s Safe and Inclusive Schools Program. She is a certified Solution Team and Solution Coach Trainer and has run over 40 Solution Teams in the last two school years.

How many public schools are there in Boston? 134.

How did you come to set up a bullying hotline? The Mayor of Boston was proactive in setting up an anti-bullying hotline. Initially we had a physical phone in a room that rang. But we had not trained anyone how to answer it. So we routed the calls to a cell phone that I now carry around with me.

What do you say to callers? “Boston Public Schools. Bullying hotline.” People are amazed to have a live person. They ask me who I am. I say that I am retired headmaster of 34 years and I have four kids of my own. I assure them that kids absolutely can expect to have a bully free education. As far as I know, Boston is unique in having a live person answer the calls.

Who calls? We get about ten calls a day. Mostly it’s parents. Sometimes students. I tell them that bullying is a very serious thing and that we can get it resolved. I ask their names and they always tell me. I ask if the school been made aware of the bullying. If they have not told anyone, I help put them in touch with the right person at the school. I always tell them to call me back if they want more help.

What happens next? Often I’ll call the school and let them know about the situation. We aim to be very proactive and often work with the school to end the bullying. It helps that I know most of the principals here. Every school in Boston needs to have an anti-bullying plan. Solution Team needs to be part of the plan. We need to get bystander involvement if we are going to make things better.

Do you recommend other school districts set up a bullying hotline? Answering the calls takes a lot of time. But it’s God’s work. Our hotline really makes a difference.

Ed Donnelly works for EDC in Boston where he advises Boston Public Schools on bullying. He is being certified by No Bully as a Solution Team & Coach trainer.

However, the feedback we get from the students on our Solution Teams is complex. Some targets of bullying court negative attention and even engage in bullying others. In many cases, both targets and bullies have social skill deficits that drive their peers to distraction.

If you take the time to respond to bullying in your school, you will inevitably surface gaps in the social and emotional development of some (not all) of the students involved. In our No Bully Solution Team and Coach workshops we train educators how to track for six key skill sets.

Self-Awareness and Self-Management Skills. Students who frequently bully others tend to have trouble managing anger and to strike out aggressively. Hyperactivity and emotional outbursts are the two factors most likely to annoy and provoke peers to bully.
Social Awareness. Students often lack empathy for the victims of bullying, especially those that they view being different from the social ideal or norm.
Relationship Skills. Targets of bullying often have fewer friends, or only friends who are also victimized, and tend to have more enemies than non-victimized children. Many are socially withdrawn and lack confidence and skills in effectively interacting with peers. High-quality friendships, or at least one best friend, can help prevent children from being a victim.
Resilience to resist social pressure to participate in bullying. Bystanders don’t intervene to help targets for many reasons e.g. fear of the social or physical power of those doing the bullying, reluctance to challenge group norms, lack of skill in effective intervention. When bystanders do assert their disapproval of a bullying act, the episode usually ends quickly-in about half the cases in fewer than 10 seconds.
Knowing when to get help from peers or other adults. Targets and bystanders typically do not seek help from peers or adults when they are unable to solve the problem on their own. Self-identified victims are particularly likely to blame themselves for their victimization and to suffer in silence. This ties into the next skillset.
Responsible Decision Making. Students who frequently bully tend to misinterpret social interactions as being more hostile, adversarial, or provocative than their peers. Bullying students tend to hold more supportive beliefs about using violence and are less confident about using nonviolent strategies to resolve conflict. Targets also lack effective social problem-solving skills. Problem-solving strategies are 13 times more effective at de-escalating conflicts than are the aggressive, retaliatory, or emotionally reactive responses most frequently used by targeted children. Even among targets who use a problem solving strategy, the vast majority employ a passive strategy, such as avoiding, acquiescing to, or ignoring the bully, instead of a more effective assertive strategy, such as talking with others to find a solution or asking others for help

Research findings for this article were derived from CASEL, a national non-profit that works tirelessly to promote social and emotional learning in our schools.

The number of teenagers involved is significant. The Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project found that one in six adolescents (age 12 to 17) has received via cell-phone a sexually suggestive nude or nearly nude photo or video of someone they know.

Sexting does not necessarily equate with increased sexual activity. A recent New York Times article described “the primary reason teenagers sext is to look cool and sexy to someone they find attractive”. But sexting does bring with it significant risk of abuse, especially when the status of the relationship changes and pictures get into the wrong hands. At that point it becomes cyberbullying. And in some jurisdictions the teenagers that disseminate the naked pictures of their peers are being prosecuted under child pornography laws.

How should adults respond? Is criminalization the answer? (At least 26 states have tried to pass some sort of sexting legislation since 2009.) Do we give principals the power of search and seizure over student cell phones, a practice authorized by many school districts? What do you think?

Awareness of others, and the ability to care for others are primary distinctions between mammals, amphibians and reptiles. Although empathy levels fluctuates vary across individuals and over the lifetime (there is a significant dip for humans in early adolescence), it is a rare mammal that exhibits the sociopathic indifference of the monkey described above.

The big question, then, is how we can promote empathy, especially in young adolescents who are exploring their individuality at the expense of others. Nel Noddings, Professor of Child Education at Stanford University, is a leading authority. Noddings says that children develop the facility to care through a progression of experiences: “learning first what it means to be cared for, then to care for intimate others, and finally to care about those we cannot care for directly”.

No Bully adopted this progression in its creation of the Solution Team response to bullying. The Solution Team leader’s initial task is to create a climate where all students feel respected and attended to. She then lays out how the target of bullying is feeling and opens up the possibility of the team caring for this student. The team is next given the chance to practice by action. As Noddings writes: “If we want to produce people who will care for another, then it makes sense to give students practice in caring and reflection on that practice … Caring-about is empty if it does not culminate in caring relations.”

The end stage, according to Noddings, is confirmation : “the act of affirming and encouraging the best in others”. Under Solution Team, the team leader invites the target of bullying to the final meeting to report back how things have improved and to thank the team. As educators, once we have a relationship of trust with our students, we are in a position to call forth their capacity to engage in acts of caring.

This, and more, we have already created, according to the findings of The Spirit Level (2009). The United States, despite its high GDP, leads the industrialized world in the majority of the societal ills described above. The most likely cause of this malaise, according to the statisticians that authored The Spirit Level, is the ever-widening income gap between the top 20% and bottom 20% of earners. The more equality that exists within a country (e.g. Japan, Sweden), the better that nation does in all social dimensions even if its average income levels are lower than the more unequal nation states.

The Spirit Level makes its case with compelling use of statistics pulled from the major world surveys. Its findings gives context to the high levels of bullying and intolerance that we have witnessed in the United States in recent years. (See the chart below that the authors kindly permitted No Bully to copy.)

Given the societal forces that lead U.S. students to bullying and violence, should we simply give up our attempts to make our schools bully-free? The answer is no, and here is why. Each school community is to greater or lesser degree its own nation state and there are plenty of schools that have successfully established the principle that they do things differently than the outside society. The moral of The Spirit Level is that the way a society organizes itself has significant impact on its health: flatter hierarchies and greater inclusivity lead to healthier and happier citizens.

No Bully is proposing a pyramid to map the optimum functioning of your school community. The schools that No Bully has found to be happiest and most successful and have graduated from promoting student competition (“war of all against all”) to adopt a more collaborative and project-based approach to learning. (If these are new concepts to you, check out the research at Edutopia). Way stations in this journey of culture change are respect and tolerance. Schools with these values teach students that there are limits to each student’s pursuit of their individual drives, namely when their acts ambitions cause harm to others. But tolerance and respect are not enough. The most successful schools harness the joy and intellectual power that comes when we work together and include all. The final question, therefore, is where is your school’s place on this pyramid?

No Bully encourages you to post your reactions to this blog and especially to our pyramid. You can find out more about our work to help schools move up the pyramid at www.nobully.com

Some will discount this spate of suicides as a gay issue. But according to a Seattle-based survey, 80% of students subjected to anti-gay taunts describe themselves as straight. David Truong, Asher Brown’s stepfather, speaks a truth that many will recognize. “For some reason, he stood out and people were just cruel. Kids were cruel to my kid. He was very different. He’s not the type of kid that would try to wear the newest clothes or try to do the coolest thing. He was an individual.” It’s chilling to read Asher’s memorial Facebook page.

School bullying co-opts mainstream prejudices and uses these to enforce conformity and to marginalize those who dare to be different. Gay calling not only reinforces societal homophobia. It also enforces stereotypical gender roles. Boys and girls who do not fit gender expectations are often targeted most viciously and frequently. For girls, being feminine typically means being attractive, and being attractive means being slender, fashionable, delicate and not a tom-boy. For boys, being masculine – and therefore not gay – often means being athletic, tough, and heterosexually active, requiring a preoccupation with sports, violence, and the sexual conquest of girls.

The adolescent’s concern about gender norms manifests in their concern to prove that they are heterosexual. In early adolescence, gender nonconforming behavior is taken as a sign of sexual orientation. Being uninterested in or unable to meet gender expectations means having not only their sexuality scrutinized and questioned, but their gender as well.

Gay and sissy calling are widespread. In 2002, the National Mental Health Association conducted a random survey of harassment based on actual or perceived sexual orientation. 78% percent reported that students who are perceived to be gay or lesbian are teased or bullied. 51% reported hearing every day names like fag, homo, and dyke, queer or gay.

There is considerable distress in all students who are targeted for their sexual orientation, whether they are in fact straight, lesbian or gay. Four students killed themselves last month because it became just too intolerable. Many thousands more struggle on hating schools and ultimately hating themselves.

Here are some easy steps to weave new students into the fabric of your school.
1. Teachers take fifteen minutes at the start of the year for activities that help students get to know each other.
2. Writing assignment. The ten most important things that a new student should know about this school. Read out your favorites. Get the class to vote on the best.
3. Assign buddy families to new student families (ideally you do this before the new students join but it’s not too late)
4. Assign a personal buddy to the new student.
5. Invite all new students to hot chocolate with the Principal and counselor starting in September and monthly through to January That’s too much of a time commitment? The reason for continuing to meet through the fall and early winter is that we forget about the new students and so they become invisible.

Every parent should go online and watch the Frontline documentary on the secret world of kids in cyberspace http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/kidsonline/
Educate yourself about the six main aspects of cyberuse – so you know what to say to your child – by scrolling through the links at http://www.ctap4.org/cybersafety/
If your child is the target of cyberbullying, go to www.stoptextbully.com for advice.

In 2008 the Missouri State Legislature passed what is know as Megan’s law, after Megan Meier, a 13-year-old Missouri girl who hanged herself in October 2006 in response to being tormented by her (fake) MySpace friend Josh. One week ago (April 29, 2010), the Massachusetts State Legislature passed an anti-bullying law in response to the suicide of Phoebe Prince, requiring all teachers and school employees to report bullying to the principal of the school and requiring the principal to investigate all claims. Forty-one states now have laws against bullying, and last fall Congress debated a federal anti-cyberbullying bill that would make it a federal crime to send a communication intended to “coerce, intimidate, harass or cause substantial emotional distress to another person.”

The United States has engaged in a longstanding love-affair with the courts and the criminal justice system, believing that the bigger the problem, the bigger the legal stick required. The result has been an ever-widening net of student behaviors in school that attract legal consequences.

But is student bullying something that we really want to criminalize? In any given semester millions of students engage in bullying, using behaviors that range from exclusion, taunting through to physical violence. Clearly the majority of these behaviors are not severe enough to warrant criminalization. Then where is the dividing line? When congress debated its version of the Megan Meier cyber bullying law, the proposed bill was limited to cyberbullying that caused “substantial emotional distress to another person”. But what constitutes “substantial”? Severe enough to interfere with schoolwork? Or only if the bullying results in suicide? In either case the question of whether it is criminal depends on the subjective response of the target of bullying – hardly satisfying the principle of jurisprudence that the law be clear and predictable.

Beyond this is the question whether criminal prosecution actually helps the moral development of the students involved. In Phoebe Prince’s case, two boys and four girls, ages 16 to 18, face a different mix of felony charges that include statutory rape, violation of civil rights with bodily injury, harassment, stalking and disturbing a school assembly. Likely, many of the accused are passing anxious days wondering when and how the criminal system will spit them out. If convicted, the experience will probably haunt these adolescents for the rest of their lives. Will this lead to their becoming more caring or engaged citizens? Really?