Crossing Boundaries

You might remember a few years ago there was a terrible mine collapse in Chile.  It took months for the trapped miners to finally be rescued.  This disaster that turned into a miracle rescue is used by Amy Edmundson in her book, Teaming, as an example of how teams of people working in different locations with different roles, levels of expertise came together to do what many would have felt was impossible at the start. She used this story to emphasize the importance of teams being to cross "boundaries" to truly collaborate for creative solutions to new and challenging problems.

One of the teams were the miners themselves.  They had to face the challenge of staying physically and more importantly psychologically healthy in order to survive as long as it ended up taking for the outside teams to learn how to rescue them.  Their survival involved reaching consensus on organizing their time, distributing jobs and responsibilities for all members and have a daily ritual when they all came together to pray every morning.

One team up above was the government of Chile.  The newly elected president stated a clear goal to everyone-get the miners out alive and spare no expense. He took a risk politically, because failing to do so would look bad afterward.  This clear and direct (unambiguous) goal also had the effect of organizing and uniting these teams across the world.  This type of goal made their efforts "heroic" rather than correcting a mistake.  They could focus on solutions rather than looking for someone to blame for the problem.

Each team involved had to acknowledge the need for help-their efforts had to be interdependent.  There was no predetermined method or technique to discover that they had to apply to the situation.  Instead these teams had to learn together and try things out knowing that many efforts wouldn't work.  Their "failures" were opportunities for ultimately learning about what would work.

One of the main initial tasks of the team above the ground was to find where the miners were.  They had to drill down into the ground carefully in order not to make the collapse worse.  They had to figure out how to drill at the proper angle but ultimately they had to locate the miners and be able to communicate with them and provide them with supplies.

Most of all the success of this mission depended upon people communicating across all types of boundaries of many she divided into three main types: physical distance, status and knowledge.

This story in way mirrors bullying prevention in schools in the following ways:

The student world and the adult world are separate entities each with their own set of rules and ways of interacting.

Kids who are bullied often feel trapped and disconnected from others in their peer group and the adult world.

No one group alone can solve the unique manifestation of bullying in a school.

Because the manifestation of bullying is unique in each school, new and creative solutions to the problem can only emerge when all the groups work together.  They cannot rely on canned solutions.

Likewise bullying prevention can learn from this story in the following ways:

There should be a clear aspiration goal uniting the work of all the members of the school community.  It shouldn't be "let's solve the problem of bullying" but instead something akin to "Create a school environment where each student can confidently walk through the door ready to learn free from fear and anxiety."

The boundaries of the adult world need to be crossed-administrators, teachers, paraprofessionals and parents have to respect the contribution that each has to solving the problem.  They cannot work at cross purposes and no one group is more at fault than another-there is no fault only shared responsibility borne out of mutual respect. (These are the teams above the ground.)  

Each team has to realize that there are no easy answers but that the mission is not just worth the effort; the mission is at the heart of what they are about as people.

The adult world (teams above the ground) bear the responsibility of figuring out the best way to reach the the student world (those below the ground).  There must be lines of communication flowing back and forth between these two worlds.  The adult world must recognize that ultimately the student world has most influence on its own members but the student world does need their resources, wisdom and guidance (not their direct control or manipulation).

When all the members of the school community embrace bullying prevention not as another problem on a list of things to do but rather as their central mission of making schools safe places for optimal learning for all members of the community,  success in spite of the odds becomes not just possible but inevitable.

The 21st Century is Now!

I have written here about how important it is to empower students not just so they can report or intervene when they see bullying, but also because these are also the same skills  needed to be successful in the workplace.  A young person I know is currently looking for a job.  Here are the skills listed for the job of project manager at an advertising firm in NYC (taken verbaten off their site):

SKILLS:


- Thorough knowledge of design process and ability to discuss in professional terms

- Ability to present and “sell” concepts and ideas to clients

- Experience working in a design studio preferred

- Outstanding written and oral communication skills

- Optimistic, personable, confident, collaborative and analytical

- Excellent organizational skills

- Experience managing scope, schedules and resources

- Self starter with excellent problem solving skills

- Demonstrated ability to work in a fast-paced environment on multiple projects

- Startup mentality. Must be comfortable working hard and in a fast-paced environment.

- Bachelor's degree or equivalent

- Some experience with Adobe Creative Suite a plus

- Minimum 2 years of experience

One of my favorite quotations is by John Dewey:

"We never educate directly but indirectly by means of the environment...The required beliefs cannot be hammered in, the needed attitudes cannot be plastered on...The very process of living together educates...Education is thus a fostering, nurturing, cultivating process."

Kids will only develop the skills in listed in the job posting when they are able to used those skills day to day as an integral part of their education.   Granted that most kids who end up getting those jobs probably went to a a pretty traditional school'  I believe that in most cases those kids developed these requisite skills inspite of the typical experience they had in schools. They might have developed them in extra curricular activities, sports and if they were fortunate, the experiences provided by their families outside of school. 

It is clear to me that the skills listed for job in the advertising agency are fairly typical of most professional companies that involve any type of creative enterprise.  I don't see the skills of "good at following imposed rules for behavior"  "works well for incentives", "completes all the work that they are given", "follow directions and promptly and accurately" '"strives not to make mistakes" or "performed well on standardized tests"  Yet schools are still designed as if the skills listed for the real jobs in the world today did not exist.  Schools especially ones that are designed for order, predictability and efficiency with the adults clearly in control and manipulating student behavior,  are really self serving and not designed to meet the needs of their students.  Ask most kids, even the ones that struggle academically, they would definitely prefer to spend their time in an environment that was actively and intentionally  designed to nurture and cultivate their unique selves rather than get standardized behavior from them.

To me the frustrating aspect of the disconnect between the typical environment of schools and the environment of the professional workplace is that schools really haven't chosen to ignore what kids really need they have just blindly accepted the assumption that kids need to be controlled and can't imagine schools being any other way.  The assumption that Alfie Kohn refers to in the quotation in my previous posting is one that seldom surfaces in any discussion of how we should educate our children-it stays buried deep in the DNA of schools, while the world looks for people with an education shaped by a very different DNA.

Tied up in NOTS

"I think that much of what goes in American schools is based on the fundamental lack of trust in children, which manifests itself in controlling them."-Alfie Kohn

If you have read this blog, you would know that I agree wholeheartedly with Alfie Kohn,  however bullying and the damage it does to kids, can really put "trust" to the test.  When it comes to protecting students, it  becomes too difficult for adults to resist taking control usually by the default approach of rules and consequences. Trusting kids does not mean taking a laissez-faire approach.   Advocates for trust instead call for involving kids in the process of governing their own environments and communities.  Kids learn by doing and learn how to be responsible to each other when adults guide the process of community building. 

One could make the case that since bullying is to a large extent determined by how bystanders respond to it, that kids have shown that they can't be trusted since they don't consistently report or intervene when they observe bullying.  Ironically, Kohn would probably argue (and I would also) that after years of being controlled by adults kids end up living "down" to our expectations, or adults get what they expect from kids.  If we don't trust kids and control them, they come to view themselves as passive recipients of adult direction and defer responsibility for governing to the those who are in control-the adults.  It is clearly up to the adults to take the first step to break this cycle.  How can adults make this "leap of trust" and still feel like they are meeting their basic responsibility for keeping kids safe?

Adults need  to first avoid making the "fundamental attribution error", i.e. thinking that the problem lies within kids - that they can't be trusted. Adults have to attribute the problem of bullying to the circumstance, conditions that exist within the social world that kids face every day.  It can be hard to trust kids who have a history of bullying.  When adults are  in a position of protecting kids from bullying, they cannot trust that these kids are going to just learn their lesson after a kind talk with an adult.

Since many of the kids who bully never even get caught doing it, adults for the most part of"'out of the loop" any way and have no direct control over what happens.  Shifting away from the fundamental attribution error, adults need to see bullying as a social action that serves a purpose for the kids that bully.  That social purpose is to impress and establish the audience of bystanders thereby raising the social status of the kid who bullies.  If adults want to "control" bullying they need to realize that they can't directly control the kid who bullies and instead address the social environment that can either support bullying or deter it. To put the challenge into a simple phrase: Stop bullying, Change the Audience.

This shift in thinking leads to the next questions: What affects how the audience (bystanders) respond to the bullying? Why don't bystanders intervene or report bullying?  Avoiding the fundamental attribution error the answer to that question is that it's NOT because they don't care or are heartless, apathetic individuals.  We need to explore why it is hard for kids to be responsible bystanders and have empathy for them.  We need to understand how easy it is for bystanders to be tied up in NOTS when it comes to bullying.  I used the term NOTS as a pun for two reasons-it is easy  to remember and to show that most kids want to help but their are many constraining forces in their world that keep them from doing what they want to do.  Here are some of the NOTS that keep kids from intervening and reporting.  In future posts I will elaborate on several of them at a time, but for now I will just list them and leave them for you figure out (hint they are the same ones that we face as adults when it comes to helping our neighbor).

NOT wrong. Kids don't see that what is happening is bullying or that it is wrong.

NOT harmful. Kids may think that what is happening is wrong but no one is really getting hurt-the victim should be able to handle it.

NOT like me.  The victim of bullying is very different from the bystander.  It is harder to help someone who we think is very different from us.

NOT my "tribe".  The victim is from a different class or group of people usually a group that the bystander; a group that the bystander doesn't want to be associated with.

NOT worthy of help.  The victim might even deserve the bullying. The victim might not be someone the teachers like.

NOT sure of what the crowd thinks.  Bystanders might wrongly think that most kids approve of bullying. It is scary for a lot of kids to step outside of the what they perceive the majority thinks.

NOT sure.  Bystanders might just be very unsure of what to do or say to stop bullying or even if it is bullying to begin with.  Uncertainty usually freezes people into inaction.

NOT clear.  Sometimes it just isn't clear about what is happening and before bystanders can decide what to do the situation is over.

NOT my job.  A bystander might think that the bullying should stop but thinks someone else should do it or that it is the adults job to do something about it.

NOT my decision.  This is the opposite of being unsure of what the crowd thinks.  A bystander interprets the inaction of others to be a sign that what is happening is not a problem. They let the behavior of others decide for them.

NOT against the rules.  The bullying might not technically be against the rules and bystanders decide right or wrong based on following or not following the rules.

NOT worth the risk.  The need for protecting the self (me) is greater than the need to help others.
NOT sure if adults will handle the situation well.  Bystanders might think that the bullying is wrong but think that telling adults will only make the situation worse.

NOT confident in their own skills and abilities.  Bystanders might want to help but figure that their efforts will be ineffective especially when matched up against a popular socially supported kid who bullies.

NOT sure of back up.  Bystanders are unsure that if they take the risk and go to an adult that the adult will support  them.  They might even get in trouble themselves.

NOT what it means to be a "good student".  Many times being an effective bystander might mean breaking some rules of the school.  It could also mean breaking the main rule of not deferring to adult authority.

Kids Who Are Bullied

There are some people who advocate focusing on building up the confidence and skills of kids who could be victims of bullying.  I support all efforts to boost the skills and abilities of all kids.  Providing kids with concrete strategies, comeback lines, and ways to avoid being bullied can only help these kids.   Like many other solutions that are primarily directed towards changing the students, this approach also ultimately falls short of significantly addressing the problem of bullying.  The main problem I have with this approach is that it fails to change the environment/social world of the school.  A program to boost the skills of vulnerable kids could support efforts to transform the culture and climate of the school, but by itself it will do little to prevent or reduce bullying.

There are several reasons why this focusing on skill building of possible victims is not the way to go:

It assumes that the characteristics of kids who are possible victims of bullying are innate and operate independently of the social context of the school.  To put it in more simple terms kid who might be vulnerable in one school could be a lot less vulnerable in a different school.  If a school has a culture that emphasizes cooperation rather than competition, where differences are not just tolerated but valued, then kids in general are less vulnerable that in other school cultures.

It mirrors the workshop model of professional development which has been proven to be ineffective.  Teachers who attend workshops and then return to their schools hoping to use what they learned at the workshop almost never do so if the school is not committed to systematically supporting the goals of the workshop.  The same holds true with students who could receive one to one counseling or specially designed lessons. When these students return to the classroom and school environment and are treated the same way as before they are not likely to transfer what they learned to the actual environment.

If a culture views "difference" negatively, there is very little that the person who is different can do to overcome the perception of others.   When kids sees differences as normal and adults treat kids who are different with respect and as full members of the community,  the way everyone acts towards those kids change.  When kids with severe physical disabilities are part of the school community and that is a common thing not an exception, kids respond in a matter of fact way and treat those kids as classmates not as "others".

Very often kids who are bullied are bullied because of how they look and not what they do or say.  It can be very disheartening to kids who look different to be led to believe that if they said or did something different that maybe they wouldn't be bullied.  Since these kids are vulnerable to begin with, any hint that the bullying is because they failed to do what they were taught to do, can be devastating to them.

It doesn't account for how adults in the environment feel about the kids who are potential victims.    There are some kids who are victims of bullying who are not well liked or accepted by many adults in the building.  Kids can easily sense who is liked or not liked by adults.  If a kid is an annoyance to a teacher, bystanders are more likely to think that the kid might deserve the bullying.  Kids would only be doing what they think the teachers would probably like them to do.

Sometimes the best defense is not what you do or say but rather who your friends are.  Getting one or two kids who are fairly well liked by most of the kids to sit near a kid could be a possible victim is a much better strategy than trying just to boost the possible victims skills.

Ironically the best way to build up kids social skills in fostering more interactions among all the students in the classroom-getting them to work together academically on tasks.  This is why cooperative learning is a leveraging strategy-it has a positive impact on many levels.  Kids are learning social skills as they learn any other skills.

Most schools are "stuck" in an individualistic culture where people should just suck it up, or pull themselves up by their bootstraps.  Schools should be more than a physical place when groups of individuals happen to be together following a similar schedule and moving toward individual outcomes.  They can and should be communities-places where every member is valued and every member cares about what happens to every member.  Schools that are strong communities where every member is valued and cared for  have less bullying and higher levels achievement for every student.  Focusing on community and how we all treat each other should be our focus and where we direct our energy for change.

Simple Formula

Until the late fifties the disease polio posed a threat to every family in America.  Now you hardly hear the word mentioned.  Why?  The problem was recognized and the attention to the problem lead to research, resources and ultimately a treatment that could be given to all children to prevent the disease from even occurring.  What if  the sequence I just mentioned ended with just the treatment being developed but  never universally distributed and given to children?  If that were the case, the issue wouldn't be polio it would the hospitals and doctor offices.  People would wonder what was wrong with the medical establishment that it failed to recognize a proven treatment and make it available to the population.  The issue/problem would no longer be polio it would be the hospitals and doctors.

Let's apply this analogy to bullying.  It has received widespread attention and recognition as a serious  and harmful problem.  To the credit of great researchers and practicioners, it is pretty clear what needs to happen to significantly prevent and reduce it in schools.  Although there is no easy to swallow pill that will cure the problem, researchers have clearly identified the social dynamics involved in bullying and what educators can do (and shouldn't do) to significantly address the problem.  Schools, however, have not consistently applied this knowledge of best practice and continue to try to solve it with the same treatments used for other problems in schools.  Really the issue at hand shouldn't be bullying anymore, it should be why the schools aren't doing the things that research have indicated as being effective.  There really shouldn't be any more conferences about bullying or TV shows about bullying.  What we should be talking about is the real issue: change-why haven't schools changed?

This however will probably never happen (I hope I am proved wrong).  The topic of why schools don't change  is too nebulous and probably too threatening.  The answers lie in places where most people don't want to go because to go there would require more reflection and analysis that require too much time and energy.  The biggest reason people don't go there is because they don't think that there is where the answers are-so they look in places for other things to fix the problem. When some of those things don't work they just shop for different things.  There is now a whole bullying prevention industry of products, programs, computer apps, assemblies, data tracking systems that ironically are dependent upon the problem of bullying persisting.  If you don't believe me just go to any conference on a topic related in any way to bullying.  (Full disclosure-I have written two books related to bullying and have presented at conferences.  Conferences serve a useful purpose as a vehicle for dialogue and discussion.  I raise these points to stimulate thinking and hopefully re-focus our energy toward more meaningful, substantive change that goes beyond just addressing bullying as an isolated problem to be fixed while accepting the status quo of schools.)

I propose a simple formula that doesn't cost anything and is consistent with what we know about bullying and what it takes to effectively address it.  This formula is not secret and it is in articles like the one I shared in my previous post by Philip Rodkin. 

Here is the formula:

• Recognize the problem is not bullying -it is change.
• Understand the change process (there is a lot of research here also)
• Understand that change starts with leadership
• Those in leadership need to first make sure their leadership is not a subtle form of bullying
• Put the focus on changing adult behavior first and don't worry right away about the students
• Make sure adults learn what they need to learn about the type of environment needed for optimal learning.
• Change adult behavior to develop empowered bystanders/students.
• An empowered and caring community of learners will provide the "immunization" to prevent and minimize the occurance of bullying, recognize it if and when it occurs, and respectfully communicate and address the problem with those who violate its social norms.

It is only as simple or hard as that. This is where we should look and work together.

How about kids who bully?

Kids who bully others are not bad kids.  They shouldn't be viewed as villains or worse yet, criminals.  All kids are capable of bullying and there are many reasons why bullying becomes an attractive behavior for them.  Many kids bully without being aware that what they are doing is bullying.  Many kids who do bully do it not to be mean but to promote their own social standing.

They are putting their own needs about the needs of others.  When it comes to that type of behavior, I can only offer the following words from the Bible, "Let him who is without sin cast the first stone."  I think that learning to put others first is a life long goal for all of us, so we shouldn't be so eager to condemn kids who are just beginning to learn that lesson.

This is part of the "works in progress" aspect of growing up.  That being said bullying should be a clear violation of social norms of the community.  It should be a behavior that sticks out instead of blending in.  A behavior that most members of the community should view as "that's not the way we treat people here."   Many infractions of the rules don't violate social norms, the same way that breaking social norms can be within the rules.  This is why just emphasizing rule following as the standard of "good behavior" fails to help kids in the many situations that they face where there are no clear rules to guide and/of no adults around to enforce them. 

When bullying is criminalized and kids who bully are treated like criminals, kids who bully are more likely to deny doing so because they rightfully don't view themselves as criminals.  We need to stigmatize the act of bullying but not stigmatize the kids who bully.  This distinction is often difficult for adults to understand and accept but it is an essential distinction to make if we want to make progress on this issue.  As I stated in the previous posts about the fundamental attribution error, we should avoid attributing the problem to the person and rather examine the circumstances, conditions and overall environment as the main contributing factors for the problem of bullying.  

One article that explains some of those conditions, environmental factors that promote bullying in schools is one by Philip Rodkin entitled, "Bullying and the Power of Peers"

http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/sept11/vol69/num01/Bullying—And-the-Power-of-Peers.aspx

I highly recommend this article for it explains the many social forces that contribute to acts of bullying in schools. Bullying serves a social function for all kids however that function differs significantly depending upon the status and skill level of students.  He describes some kids as socially marginalized for whom bullying can be a defense against a social system that keeps them on the periphery.  Bullying allows them some momentary respite from being a victim.  Sadly, bullying helps them feel like they have some power over others even though they might feel powerless in controlling their our lives.  These kids are often the 5% who get caught bullying by adults because they lack the cleverness to get away with bullying and they also don't have allies who help them when they get caught.  These kids get a double whammy-they often are picked on other kids for being different and then are viewed as troublemakers by adults. 

There is another class of kids who Rodkin calls socially connected.  These are kids who can be popular and socially skilled.  These kids bully often to raise their status even higher.  They know how not to get caught and if they do, they will often have many allies who will support their denials.  Many bystanders don't tell on these kids because they are popular and are more appealing socially than the kids that they bully.  These kids bully in the blind spot of adults and often are well liked by adults which only increases their power and sense of invulnerability.  Many of these kids derive satisfaction from being able to "flex their muscles" socially-they are not dissimilar to adults in positions of authority to like to throw their weight around, so to speak.

It is clear to me that the social environment of schools is almost designed to produce both types of bullying.  This social structure is built into the DNA of traditional schools so it is very resistant to the traditional approaches of addressing bullying.  Rodkin's strongly recommends that schools become more democratic and less autocratic on all levels.  When kids have ways of exercising power within the structure of school and their own learning, there is less of a need to find it elsewhere.  When adults share power with kids and involve them in co-creating the social environment of the school, kids feel a greater sense of ownership in the school and more likely to tip the social norms towards behaviors that are incompatible with bullying.  When kids receive regular, every day opportunities to practice using power in positive ways for themselves and others, there is less of a need to abuse power under the radar.   Three quotations from this article are well worth heeding and should guide our educational decisions:

"Classrooms with  more egalitarian social status hierarchies, strong group norms in support of academic achievement and prosocial behavior and positive social ties among children should deprive  many socially connected bullies the peer regard they require."  (I might add that such classroom can also give these kids other ways/outlets for using power.)

"... even the best, most rigorous and most validated intervention won't be successful without taking into account the weak social infrastructure and dysfunctional organizational environments of some schools."

"The task ahead is to better integrate bullies and the children they harass into the social fabric of the school and better inform educators of how to recognize, understand, and help guide children's relationships. With guidance from caring, engaged adults, youth can organize themselves as a force that makes bullying less effective as a means of social connection or as an outlet for alienation."

"Works in Progress"

In the book, Switch, by Dan and Chip Heath, the authors discuss how people have a deep-rooted tendency to ignore the situational factors that shape other people’s behavior.  They call this the “Fundamental Attribution Error”.  The error lies in our inclination to attribute people’s behavior to the way they are rather than the situation that they are in.  This attribution error manifests itself when someone is thought of as stubborn or difficult.

  

This attribution error is very prominent in schools and strongly influences many school practices.  When kids for any reason fail to conform to the expectations of those in authority whether it be in academic domains or social emotional domains the reasons for failing to meet those expectations are believed to reside within the student.  If a student fails consistently, the student has a learning disability-there is something wrong with the student.   If we attributed the problem from the person to the situation, we could easily explain the failure differently.  What if the problem was the situation?  The “failure” was more a function of the situation where an arbitrary timeline for learning something was imposed, so that the student just needed more time to learn it.  Remove the arbitrary timeline for learning and the student could master the subject without the stigma of failing.  If this sounds like a radical idea, it shouldn’t.  We allow people to take the driving test for getting their license when they are ready to pass it and then most people who want to drive are able to pass it.  Why shouldn’t students take tests to show mastery of a topic when they are ready to pass it, so there would be no failures?  We can have a lot of control of a situation when we take the time to examine the situation and learn to “tweak the environment” so that people can succeed.  That is if our goal is to have people succeed (and success for some is dependent upon some people failing).

Let’s apply this fundamental attribution error to bullying prevention.  This relates to my prior post related to attributing a student’s inappropriate behavior to “will” or motivation rather than “skill.”  Most behavioral programs are based on the premise that you change students’ behavior by rewarding them when they act according to the expectations of those in authority and deprive them of those rewards when they don’t.  The kids who fail to do well in school are often thought to lack motivation.  A better way to interpret this “unmotivated” behavior is this: they are motivated to avoid failing at tasks/goals that appear arbitrary and unattainable to them. Change their perception and experience of school to a place where success is attainable and failure is not stigmatized and they will be motivated, or better yet would have never lost their motivation to learn in the first place.

This approach is based on the premise that kids are not motivated to do good.  Ross Greene suggests that most kids want to do well and when they don’t it is because they lack the skills that will help them met the expectations facing them.  I argued that this shift  from “will” attribution to “skill” attribution fundamentally changes teacher attitude and behavior towards kids who have behavioral problems. They would be less likely to be angry or resentful towards the “troublemakers” and instead see them as needing more help and support in learning better ways of solving problems especially in the social world. 

I want to take this thinking a step further with the problem of bullying.  This fundamental attribution error affects how we see the student who bullies, is bullied and the bystanders.  In reality, all students are works in progress, i.e. they are learning how to live in the social world and it is inevitable that they will make mistakes.   How we as adults interpret these mistakes and respond to them is really the critical factor in determining their frequency, duration and impact on the school community.

Here are some key points that should guide educators in avoiding the fundamental attribution error when it comes to school bullying:

Make sure that staff  accept the fact that kids will make mistakes and that mistakes are part of the learning process.  This doesn’t mean that bullying is a rite of passage that is unavoidable, but it does mean that kids who bully aren’t bad kids or are inherently troublemakers.  It means that some kids need to learn how not to bully others.  That may sound strange, but it recognizes the fact that bullying in many situations provides a social function for kids-it raises their status.  We have to help kids learn other ways to do this.

Avoid the mindset that the desired state of school should be problem free or that problems are things that get in the way of “smooth functioning” or order.  We should have a matter of fact attitude towards problems.  This will make discussing them a lot less emotional.  This type of attitude makes it more likely that kids will be more open to sharing them or discussing them with adults. 

Recognize that knowing about problems is much better than not knowing about them.  In schools ignorance is not bliss it is dangerous.  We also need to know that the default mindset of most people is that those in leadership positions prefer the “no news is good news” concept.  This means that people are reluctant to bring problems to those in authority.  Small problems that are ignored often turn into large problems that can’t be ignored because damage has been done.

Operate on the assumption that people want to do well.  This will eliminate the false need (driven by fear) that we have to motivate kids (anybody) to do well.  Focus instead on understanding the reasons people don’t do what  we think they should do.  When we have a better understanding of the factors that influence why people do what they do, we can start to work with them, coach them to learn why they are doing what they are doing and what they can do differently to meet their needs in a better way.

Recognize the developmental needs of kids and how these differ from traditional behavioral stimulus/response explanations of behavior.  Going around giving out tokens or rewards catching kids being good doesn't really help kids live in their social world.  We are only trying to get them to behave the way we want them to behave.  We need to recognize what kids are experiencing developmentally and how those internal needs affect their external behavior.  We need to help kids figure out what is going on inside of them-that is why talking and communicating should be a key element not just of bullying prevention, but of education in general.

Acknowledge and value the presence of the social nature of learning.  If we don’t devote time and conversation to acknowledging with kids that we know how important the social world is to them, they will not share what is going on in it with us.  Kids do naturally almost need to keep some things from adults, but they need to know that we recognize the social world as important to them so that they don’t automatically keep everything from us.  When teachers appear that the most important thing to them is getting kids to learn subject matter, they are inadvertently sending the message that they are unconcerned with what is happening in kids’ lives.  Taking even a few minutes to acknowledge the social world periodically lets kids know that adults do care and are then to listen when kids decide they need help.

Remember always that adults and kids are in it together.  We are all struggling together to make things work and it is not easy.  Acknowledging this to kids helps them see that life is a constant process of working things out and doing this together is a lot easier then doing it alone.  To quote the movie Jerry Maguire: “Help me to help you” –this should be a key message that we send kids.

Being compassionate and caring toward the kids who break the rules does not mean you are soft or condone the behavior.  There are actually adults who feel that if anyone shows any kindness to a “rule breaker” that they will be promoting that type of behavior.  This is why a harsh tone of voice or condescending attitude can become so prevalent in many adults who discipline kids. A bottom line principle for staff needs to be that no one is ever deserving of disrespect.  Kids who make mistakes need our compassion and will accept our guidance and direction when we respect and care for them.

Schools cannot be places where the adult world and the student world have few places of connection.  It cannot be “us” against “them” but much more of a “we are in this together”.  We are all “works in progress” which is just another way of saying that schools are places of learning.  If we think about what learning really means and make schools place of learning rather than places of performance, we would be heading in the right direction not just toward less bullying but toward more optimal learning across the board.  We are all  “works in progress” and we need to help each other get better all the time. (Remember the movement is from good to great not from bad to good.)