Quick Tips on Bully Prevention

Goals and Expectations for an Effective Anti-Bullying Program

•  It should be implemented school wide with all students (i.e. children with disabilities and neurotypical), teachers (ESE and General Education), and administrative staffs involved. 
• It should be based on a Social Emotional Learning program to help build self-awareness and self-management skills.
• It should be part of the daily curriculum in all classes.  Especially with inclusion becoming mandatory and in the works, it is a great time for all teachers to implement an anti-bullying program in their academic curriculum as part of social growth.  
• It should be a program that promotes involvement from the parents of both sub-groups (special needs and general education students ) and in understanding that it all starts at home and the conversation we have at the dinner table.
• It should have parents involved in the implementation of an effective anti-bullying program by having their special need children involved in more community social events.

The Desired Anti-Bullying Program

• Intervisitation:
  
  • Principals and teachers should be given the opportunity to visit and learn about other school's Anti-Bullying Programs.  This will help in tweaking problems shared among their colleagues and share new ideas to add to their own program. 
• Monthly principal support groups:
  
  • Principals should be able to meet up once a month in a conference type of social event to learn from each other about major bullying incidents, up to date information on trends in shared evidence based research strategies used to help prevent bullying in a school environment.  
• Principal peer coaching:
  
  • Experienced and inexperienced principals should be able to partner-up to exchange information and mentor effective strategies and techniques that would be later spread out to their own school staff. 
• Supervisory walk-through:
  
  • With the support of the principal, data-driven educational walk-throughs should be held in a consistent manner to help bring effective feedback to teachers on the principal's observation of real-time techniques being used.  In addition, this is a great way for teachers to bring up important conversations with a question on the effectiveness of their methods and outcomes.  
• District institutes:
  
  •  On a district/ city-wide level, districts policies on anti-bullying prevention are applied and should be recognized to keep the program effective.  If the Anti-Bullying program is transferred to a student's local library to the recreation center, this can help in creating an anti-bullying culture across the board. 
• Principals’ study groups:
  
  • Continuous education and research can be conducted on the top effective strategies in the city/school wide Anti-Bullying Program.  If principals from several schools promote a program that is based on data, this data can be analyzed in a team based approach with a large sample which can become an active action research study that principals can use as evidence on what work well in their schools. 
• Individualized coaching:
  
  • Just like teachers,  principal's need educational assistance with the help of a more experience individual.  Individualized coaching can help with issues on a smaller scale compared to looking at all schools, one school will be focused on and it's unique incidents/issues.   
  
  
  
  
  

5 Quick Rules for Staffs to Remember

• Unified Goals: Staff must understand and remember the big picture that if bullying is not tackled it can affect the academic performance of a class as a whole.  With such distraction in a hostile environment, it is hard for  students, in general, to focus solely on the academics that is being taught on a daily basis in school. 
• PBIS: As part of the Anti-Bullying Program, teachers and staff should implement a Positive Behavior Interventions and Support (PBIS) system which has been known to help in the reduction of problem behaviors that can be associated with bullying by promoting teamwork among school staff members and basing effective decision making on data collection. 
•  Anti-Bullying Education: Teachers, students and staff must understand the importance of the ant-bullying philosophy by being educated on what bullying is, how it looks in real life situations, how to prevent it, how not to be just a by stander and how to be models for good behavior themselves in a socially conscious school community that understands the inclusion of all students, especially those with special needs.  Administrators can do this by providing teachers with continuous professional development workshops on Anti-bullying.  In addition, provide visual and clear policies of ant-bullying exceptions and consequences throughout the school campus. 
•  Importance of Role: To implement an effective program, teachers and staff should understand the importance of their active involvement in daily adult supervision in large group meeting areas (i.e. playgrounds, cafeterias, assemblies, and hallways).
•  Parental Involvement: We can never forget the importance of parental involvement when implementing such an important program on the school campus.  Teachers and staff should have an effective communication system with parents when it comes to what is going on with their child, education on what bullying is and how to prevent it, to suggested home activities to help bring the discussion of what bullying is at home and how special needs children should be treated and included in social events (i.e. birthday parties, sport games, etc.).