Life Needs an Instant Replay

Social situations can happen quickly and "vanish" out of sight. Unlike physical objects that we can look at and touch, social situations instantly slip into our memories. Experiencing a new and different social situation can often leave us thinkging to ourselves, "What just happened?" followed by "Why didn't I do or say something" or worse yet, "Why did I do or say that?". We have all had these feelings, but as adults, we have a bank of prior experiences that help us understand what happened in retrospect. As adults however we can easily forget that young people lack this preparation and are more likely to be either caught off guard or confused by social situations. Very often when students are asked why they did something or said something they honestly reply, "I don't know." We cannot prepare for every situation but preparation and some degree of familiarity can help us when we find ourselves in an ambiguous and quickly evolving social situation. These social situations usually trigger emotions which also make it harder for us to think straight in the situation. We have many educational practices that recognize this need for preparation. Fire drills are one example of such a preparation. If a real fire were to occur, we cannot wait for each person to cognitively process the situation and choose the right response. With enough rehearsal, we can be trained to automatically respond with the safest action. We also see rehearsal and preparation in sports. Coaches call time out during critical spots in a game to review possible scenarios and remind players of their options. These time outs however would not be effective if they weren't supported by hours of practice. I share these thoughts because today I had the great opportunity to see a Peaceful School Bus meetings in action at a local elementary school. The students viewed a few scenes from the movie Bridge to Terabithia showing bullying on the school bus. The students viewed the scenes once but then viewed them a second time and told to view them through the lens of the student who bullied, the bullied student or the bystanders. Following the replay they discussed how they thought each of the three key participants/roles felt and what they could have done differently. The students were fully engaged while viewing the clips and discussing the situation. They had insight into the feeling of each of the students in the video and had a variety of effective alternative responses. The school bus is an especially difficult environment in which to to think straight. What happens there is often also something many students deliberately would like to forget. I had to feel that these students, however, would be better prepared for the social situations they faced on the bus. It is also important to remember that in bullying situations, we don't need every student to respond appropriately or in a helpful, responsible way, we just need one or two students instead of none. One other thing happened in the meeting that would be easy to overlook. The teacher leader of the meeting asked the bus driver to pick a goal for the students. He said they needed to do a better job of remaining seated throughout the ride. The leader asked the kids why it was important to stay seated. I realized that many kids don't automatically know the answer to the question. Many kids would think that staying seated was just another rule to follow. It may seem like a small and obvious thing but explaining the reason behind the rule and how following the rule is in their own best interests can make a positive difference in student behavior. The forty five minutes devoted three times a year to the PSB is really a small investment that can pay dividends in improving life on the bus for all students.

The Blind Spot of Bullying Prevention

 
Recently, I had a minor fender bender accident because I failed to adequately check my blind spot while driving my car. I am sure that I am not the only person who has made this mistake.  There are two main reasons for failing to check our blind spots: the road may look clear in the rear view mirror and we have become conditioned to consequence-free lane changing. Those of us who fail to check are not necessarily “bad drivers”; for the most part we follow the speed limit and all the rules of the road. This failure to check is a bad habit we develop.  Unfortunately, we are prompted to change this habit only after receiving dramatic feedback in the form of an accident.
 
This anecdote serves as an analogy to the current state of affairs regarding bullying in our schools. There are too many tragic “accidents” (not just fender benders) that occur because of bullying.  This is why despite the attention bullying receives in the media; it appears to the public that school leaders are indifferent to the problem.  School leaders, however, want to help but something gets in the way.  They are often surprised that an “accident” could even happen in their school. The problem is a lack of knowledge and training rather than a lack of caring.  Still the suggestion that “they would if they could but they can’t” is not a sufficient excuse.  School leaders need to learn about bullying and how it thrives in their “blind spot”.  They need to learn how to “see it” even when they can’t. They need to know and understand the nature of bullying and how it operates in schools.
 
According to the National Association of School Psychologists (2003) factsheet on bullying, only 4-5% of bullying is ever witnessed by an adult and according to the 2007 National Crime Victimization report approximately 65% of students who are targets of bullying don’t report it.  Given these facts, school leaders can easily develop a very false sense of security and underestimate the amount of bullying in the school.  These two statistics create the “blind spot” that leaders need to know about.
 
Often school leaders use traditional disciplinary approaches as their sole strategy for addressing the problem of bullying. These strategies focus primarily on the perpetrators and targets.  They also do little to prevent bullying from occurring in the first place. Bullying requires an understanding of the important role of that bystanders play in affecting the amount and frequency of bullying in a school.  School leaders need to know and understand the difference between bullying and conflict and respond differently to each. Bringing a student who bullies together with the targeted student to work it out as equals is serious mistake.  That will only make life harder for the targeted student.  
 
Research has also demonstrated that the strategy of simply increasing the severity and harshness of consequences for those students who are caught bullying, is ineffective.  Such decisions and actions can suppress and deter the reporting of bullying.
 
 
 
 
Who Holds the Key?
 
Recently on Anderson Cooper’s No Escape from Bullying program, the panelists emphasized the need for training teachers and parents. There was no mention of any training or support for school leaders.  Watching the program, as a former principal for over twenty years, I felt like I was sitting behind a glass window looking at people working on a jigsaw puzzle with the final missing piece sitting right on the table in plain but never noticed.  I felt like shouting, “Please don’t forget training and supporting the people who have the most influence and receive the most blame: the school leaders.”
 
After a tragic event that occurs as the result of bullying, school leadership receives the blame and criticism of the public.  “The Canadian Commission to Prevent Bullying suggests that, “The success of a bulling prevention program and other violence prevention programs depends upon the commitment, understanding and actions of the principal.  The principal sets the tone and ultimately provides the time, resources and opportunities for the implementation and evaluation of the interventions.” If school leaders hold such influence (and they do), why don’t they receive the training, support and resources they need to improve our schools?
 
It could be assumed that school leaders don’t require special and specific training or that they would be “immune” to any training that is offered to them.  It could also be assumed that their influence on affecting positive change is a school is minimal and therefore teachers should be the sole recipient of training. I strongly disagree with these assumptions.   School leaders hold the responsibility for making bully prevention a priority for their school community.  They are also responsible for selecting an appropriate program, and formulating policies, rules and regulations pertaining to bullying.  Most importantly, they have the most influence and the accountability for getting the school staff and members of the community involved and supportive of these efforts.
 
Without the appropriate knowledge and training, schools leaders will be ineffective in preventing and reducing bullying.  Worse yet, their decisions and actions could inadvertently increase the amount of bullying in their schools.
 
 
Where the Answer Lies
 
 
School leaders need to look at the problem in a very different way:  from seeing bullying, solely as a discipline problem involving a few students, to seeing it as an opportunity to improve the culture and climate of a school for everyone. The Massachusetts Dept. of Health publication, Direct from the Field: a Guide to Bullying Prevention, states: “Research shows the best bullying prevention efforts are comprehensive in nature and address changing the culture of a school.  Schools where bullying is less likely to happen and, and when it does, more likely to be reported and corrected, are schools that promote caring, compassion, and a sense of responsibility among students and adults.”  Seeing the problem differently however, is only a first step in effectively addressing it.  School leaders need to change the culture of their school.   This is easier said than done.
 
There is no reason why the current knowledge and research available about effective leadership cannot be integrated with the knowledge and research about bullying prevention. This is the type of training and professional development that can educate everyone about those “blind spots” and learn the right habit for checking for them.  The tragic accidents of bullying don’t have to happen. School leaders can learn to use new and different tools to appropriately address the problem of bullying.  Effective school leadership can make a difference in keeping schools safe for everyone.
 
Progress in bullying prevention depends not just on implementing the right program, but putting the right program in the hands of skilled and knowledgeable school leaders.  Given what we know of the damage that bullying does to an entire school community, we cannot leave our efforts to chance. We must acknowledge the crucial role that school leaders play in bullying prevention and provide them with the professional development they need to make and keep every school a safe place where students can learn to their full potential.

Checklist for Leadership

Five Point Leadership Inspection

School leaders who accurately “inspect themselves” will be better prepared to lead the school community in bullying prevention efforts. Here are five key areas to check as part of reflecting on their use of power:

1. Check Under the Hood

Many of the decisions that school leaders make are guided by the implicit or hidden assumptions that they make about those they lead.

McGregor (1960) has described and categorized two sets of assumptions as Theory X and Y:

Theory X
The average human being has an inherent dislike of work and will avoid it if he or she can. If a job is satisfying, then the result will be commitment to the organization.
Because of their dislike for work, most people must be controlled and threatened before they will work hard enough.
Theory Y
The average person learns under proper conditions not only to accept but also seek responsibility.
The average human prefers to be directed, dislikes responsibility, is unambiguous, and desires security above all else. Imagination, creativity, and ingenuity can be used to solve work problems by a large number of employees.

For a school leader “checking under the hood” means being aware of these assumptions and how they influence all their interactions with staff and students.

Question to ask: Do my decisions reflect Theory X or Theory Y assumptions?








2. Check Your Power Source

Leadership is changing people’s hearts and minds by not “throwing one’s weight around”, but by getting people to pay attention to the right things. It is important for leaders to ask themselves why people should follow them.

People listen to leaders whom they trust and think are acting to support them rather than trying control or manipulate them. People listen to leaders who listen to them and respect leaders who respect them.

Change might take longer when leaders give people the freedom not to follow. Effective bullying prevention requires staff commitment not just compliance. When the school community has the will to change, they will find the right way to do it.

Question to ask: What is the main source of my authority: the power of my position or respect for my ideas, values, skills and knowledge?


3. Monitor Your Comfort Index
Bullying is complex and challenging problem that manifests itself differently in each school. School leaders are most effective when they promote a sense of shared leadership with the entire school community. Bully prevention is a process rather than a final product, therefore, there will always be problems and challenges. The input and feedback from all members of the school community are essential to making the right adjustments and modifications in the school’s ongoing efforts.

Question to ask: How comfortable am I with:
• Asking for help
• Being uncertain at times
• Admitting mistakes
• Accepting ideas that might differ from your own?

4. Check Your Alignment and Balance
School leaders are in the spotlight and under the microscope at the same time. Their words and actions need to be in alignment with their own values and the mission and values of the school. They should be wary of any justification for words and actions that do not reflect a high standard of respect for all.
There should be an urgency to all bullying prevention efforts, yet using fear or panic to motivate others is counterproductive. Effective school leaders convey urgency not out of fear or panic, but from a desire to do what is right and necessary for the school community. They should project a calm confidence that the school community will work together and do what is necessary to make school a safe place for all students to learn.

Questions to ask: Do I consistently “treat others the way I want to be treated” regardless of what others have done? Do I convey the importance and urgency of keeping students safe, while also expressing confidence in the school’s ability to respond to that challenge?

5. Decide on how to use your GPS
A Wallace Foundation report summarizing the research on educational leadership stated that the two essential roles of a school leader: to set direction and to influence others to move in that direction. Effective school leaders help others understand the goal and purpose of bullying prevention. They involve all members of the school community in planning, implementing and evaluating all bullying prevention efforts.
Question to ask: Do my words and actions point others in the right direction and influence how they think and act or do I decide what needs to be done and then manage others to follow my plan?

Blending In or Standing Out

A teacher, who just switched jobs going from a large school district to a small private school, approached me after a presentation, where I stressed the need to improve a school’s overall climate as the key element to effective bullying prevention. I guess he had a need to talk and process what he had just heard. Shaking his head, he said, “Looking back on my former school and comparing to my current school, I realize only now that “bullying” was part of the atmosphere of my old school but at the time I didn’t know it.” It is easy to become adjusted and conditioned to even the worst situations especially when we don’t have a frame of reference. This teacher had a new experience where people treated each other with more respect and that reflection combined with what I presented, finally gave him an insight into how bullying can hide in plain sight.

In the recent movie, Contagion, there is a scene that reflects how easy it is for bullying to hide in a school. In this scene, two scientists are looking at computer animation the virus that was infecting the population and spreading exponentially throughout the population. The animation showed the how similar in shape and structure the virus was from the host cells. The virus fit into the cellular structure of the host like a “key slipping into a lock”. One scientist added the comment referring to the virus, “It is figuring us out faster than we can figure it out.” The virus fooled the immune system because it wasn’t a “foreign” cell - it blended into and appeared to be at home in the system.

Bullying unfortunately has found a compatible host in many of our schools. It doesn’t stand out but blends in and over time it becomes just a part of the school. This is why many schools can be perplexed when they find out that bullying is problem. When the research points to the need to change the school’s culture or climate, it is not surprising that many people in the school have no idea of how to do that or why to do it. It is hard for them to see any alternative for how to treat students.

Bullying is very much about control and power and schools are also about control and power. How adults use their power and how they attempt to control students determines to very large extent, whether bullying will stand out in a school or blend in. The more a school’s philosophy is to “do to” instead of “work with” students, the more likely bullying will be able to hide and blend in. In a school, where adults involve students in problem solving and decision making and where responsible behavior is not limited to just following the rules in order to get something or avoid something, bullying will stand out and call attention to itself. When it stands out, I believe our natural immune system (empathy and a basic human inclination toward moral behavior) can take action to restore the system to health and harmony. In my new book, No Place for Bullying, I explore this issue in detail. In my next blog post I will review an inspection checklist that I developed for adults to reflect upon how they use power in a school environment.

Challenge of Empowering Bystanders

One of the most basic of assumptions of education is that adults can have direct influence and control over what students do and say. Educators are "successful" in controlling students. Students adhere to the schedules that are determined for them. Students follow a variety of directions from simple ones of taking out a book to sophisticated ones like following procedures in a science lab. They do homework assignments so this control extends outside of the school building. This control is so consistent and educators are so good at it, that those relatively few instances when students don't follow the directions or adhere to the rules are cause for alarm and concern. Since so much depends upon this control, educators are naturally very wary of situations where they might need to change how they control students. It is also hard to imagine how education as we know it could function without this degree of control over students. The alternative to successful control is thought to be "chaos". This is why educators are afraid of letting any student "get away" with any infraction because other students would want to follow the student who got away with it. This control that works for so much of school is counterproductive when it come to bullying.

I am not proposing that adult control is a bad thing. Having hundreds of students in one building moving from place to place and all having to learn similar things requires that "things" run smoothly-or that certain routines and procedures are established and followed without having to question or think about them.

The problem of bullying is so resistent to adult control precisely because it operates in the social world of students which is the one area that students can protect from adult control. It is world that operates outside of the adult experience of school. For most educators getting kids to learn the curriculum and perform academically is what is most important. Ask most students (especially older than ten) what is most important to them and they would say their friends and social world of school. Students and adults occupy the same time and space but have totally different experiences. Students who allow themselves to be controlled with the academic world do not automatically allow this control over their social world. This works out ok because there is a tacit agreement between students and adults to keep these worlds separate. These world operate simultaneously but independent of each other until something like bullying happens.

Bullying takes place in the "protected" social world of students that adults are unaware of and often unconcerned about. This is why adults observe about 5% of the bullying that occurs in schools and students observe almost all of it. Adults are pretty good at dealing with the 5% and think that the 5% represents almost of all it. This perceived success is probably the biggest obstacle to changing how bullying is addressed in schools today.

Students have learned how to bully (exert control over others) in the world that they know is hidden from adults. A world that they know that even the student who is bullied is reluctant to reveal to the adults (especially if that student thinks that adults don't want to be bothered by events in that world). Bullying depends upon the separation the separation of the student world and the adult world. If the adult world is too controlling or harsh, students will not trust it or use it as a resource. They will only want to avoid adults who they perceive as controlling rather than helpful, respectful and trustworthy.

While students need adult control in their lives and of their lives, they also need to gradually learn to live with less and less direct adult control. The most optimum learning experiences are ones that provide structure and parameters for how students act with a balance of freedom and choice with the subsequent mistakes and misjudgments that come with living.

This is why effective bullying prevention requires adults to realize the limits of direct control of students . They must also trust that less control doesn't mean that most students will go wild and out of control. They must trust that most students want to do what is right but will sometimes forget and go astray. Adults need to shift from direct control of students and learn to be trusted coaches and resources who encourage and remind them that they are basically good and capable regardless of what they might sometimes do.

This shift is the essential shift for effective bullying prevention in schools.

Here are the assumptions that adults need to have regarding bullying in schools:

Focus on the social environment and the relationships among students rather just react to individual acts of bullying after they occur.

Realize that students behavior is determined much more by the social context rather than the consequences imposed by adults on their actions.

Adults are most effective when they empower bystanders helping them understand how influential they are in determining the amount of bullying that happens in an environment.

Adults must give them the specific skills and strategies to deal with often ambiguous social situations when bullying is occuring.

Empowered and effective bystanders are usually students who can think for themselves and can see what is right even when it is not clearly defined by the rules.

Ironically, empowering bystanders means promoting leadership in students. Students can only be leaders when adults can trust them and believe in them which means giving them the freedom to make mistakes.

Why focusing on rules and consequences is ineffective

Rules and consequences have their place in school discipline and serve a purpose, they are however, ineffective in preventing or reducing bullying. Rules and consequences do send a signal about what is important and valued in a community, but do not really help kids learn what they need to learn to be successful.


Educators continue to rely on these because there appears to be few alternatives to controlling inappropriate behavior. Often educators will reiterate the rules or publicize them more. They will also increase the severity of the consequences or increase the rewards for following the rules. One problem with this approach is that it is hard to tell if any of this is working since adults are unaware of most of the bullying that is occurring anyway-especially bullying that is on the bus.



Here are a few of the reasons why rules and consequences are not effective:

• The socially competent kids who bully are skilled in doing it under the radar and can do so very subtly. If you are pretty confident that they you will not get caught, potential consequences are easy to ignore.
  
  


• The socially maladjusted kids who bully are often bully/victims. They bully to raise their status since kids who bully are viewed more favorably by peers than kids who are victims. These students often also have poor self regulation skills and can tend to act impulsively without thinking. In short , if they could stop and think about consequences they probably wouldn't do it in the first place, or would bully in a more clever way.
  



• These bully/victims are probably the perpetrators in the bullying that adults do witness. If these tend to be the kids who receive the consequences while other kids who bully go untouched, it only adds insult to injury to these kids since they are already "punished" enough by the more clever bullies. No wonder the research is pretty clear that these kids are at the greatest risk for serious problems later on in their lives.
  
  


• The social/developmental payoff for bullying is usually more powerful than any reward or consequence adults can provide. Some kids bully to impress peers. Some boys bully to impress girls. The need for social status and approval from peers can easily outweigh the desire to avoid adult consequences or disapproval.
  
  


• Rules and consequences are directed toward individuals and their actions. Bullying is really a social problems tied to relationships and the social dynamics among students. To be effective educators must realize that their efforts need to be directed toward all the students. Bystanders are really the key element in determining the hold that bullying has on a group of kids.
  
  


• Consequences by themselves do not "teach" or give kids new skills or strategies to use in the future. The social world is confusing at times for kids and they are dealing with forces often beyond their own understanding. Unless we help them learn to "navigate" their own social and emotional world, we will be sending them back in situations ill equipped for success.

Educators need to change the social norms of how kids interact. This is harder to do but it is the only effective way of addressing the problem of bullying on the bus or anywhere.

Ironically even if the traditional rules, rewards, consequence approach to controlling student behavior "works" in the short run, there are long term effects from its "success" than could contribute to the problem of bullying. I will try to expand on this in my next post.

twitter chat

I haven't contributed to this blog for a long time but I was invited to participate in a twitter chat on Wednesday night January 11, 2012 at 9:00 p.m. Joe Mazza, a principal, is using twitter to connect with educators around the world using social media. He was kind enough to orient and coach me in using twitter. Since the people who participate in the chat might want more information or to contact me, I decided to resurrect this blog. I had forgotten it because it didn't seem to get any traffic but now that might change.

I have retired since the last post but I have been busy consulting, training and have written another book, No Place for Bullying: A School Leader' s Guide to Bullying Prevention. It will be published by Corwin and available in the fall.