these bullying is a serious public
health problem
experts say school bullying linked to
poor academic achievement are we too
quick to cry bully
after years of alleged bullying and Ohio
teen killed herself is her school
district responsible stories about
bullying are common in the media and we
often talk about bullying in schools but
are we getting any closer to a solution
Jen and I are here today to share some
of the most compelling findings from our
research over the past 20 years in
particular we will dispel the myth that
schools should be more concerned about
targets of bullying than perpetrators of
bullying and we will talk about just how
important it is for schools to
understand the bullying experiences
among their students for those of you
who are educators the following story
might sound familiar Marla is a fifth
grade student in a local school she’s
creative she’s thoughtful and she likes
basketball she’s also being bullied by
another student at her school named
Jeremy at first he made fun of her
clothes during math class and then he
ran up behind her during PE class and
yelled in her ear and one day in the
lunchroom he shoved her lunch tray and
the food spilled all over her shirt
Marla told her teacher each time these
things happened and the teacher told the
vice principal the vice principal called
Jeremy into his office and called home
to his parents and gave Jeremiah
detention these are the kinds of stories
that Melissa and I often hear when we go
into schools
it’s common for administrators and
teachers to administer disciplinary
consequences to students who are
involved in bullying that’s a typical
response but there’s reason for this to
give you pause it’s not difficult to
find a news headlines about bullying and
suicide and like the one we showed they
focus on targets of bullying however the
news headlines are only telling part of
the story
along with colleagues I analyzed all of
the major studies on bullying and
suicide we found that students involved
in bullying in any way as targets or
perpetrators were more likely to
consider and to attempt suicide than
students who are not involved in
bullying and the students who were at
greatest risk of all for considering and
attempting suicide for those who were
both targeted by and perpetrated
bullying so the headlines are misleading
there are of course many reasons that
the same students who are involved in
bullying might also consider or attempt
suicide
for example mental health problems are
related to both suicide and to bullying
a factor that’s talked about much less
frequently a student’s exposure to other
forms of victimization like child abuse
and neglect in a study of elementary
school students who lived in the city
with crime rates much higher than the
national average we found that among
students uninvolved in bullying 10
percent reported child maltreatment
twenty-eight percent reported witnessing
violence like community violence or
domestic violence and three percent
reported sexual victimization let’s now
compare this to targets of bullying as
you can see among targets of bullying
thirty five percent reported child abuse
and neglect forty-one percent reported
witnessing violence and twelve percent
reported sexual victimization well it
might not come as a surprise to you that
targets of bullying also experience
higher rates of victimization but what
about perpetrators twenty four percent
of perpetrators reported child
maltreatment sixty-one percent reported
wit
to sing violence and 11% reported sexual
victimization let that sink in for a
minute that means that students involved
in bullying in any way are more likely
to experience victimization in the home
and in the community we’ve found similar
patterns for other forms of
victimization as well like dating
violence and sexual harassment so what
does this mean for schools well it means
when schools are working with students
involved in bullying it’s important to
assess for other victimization exposures
or you might be missing a critical
factor think back now to that story
about Marla and Jeremy they are both a
greater risk for considering or
attempting suicide and they are both a
greater risk for exposure to child abuse
neglect and dating violence our hope is
that this information will lead you to
think differently about how to support
students who are involved in bullying
and not relying on disciplinary policies
and we’ve partnered with schools to do
just that when Melissa and I go into
schools we work with schools on
developing more supportive and effective
strategies for responding to bullying as
it’s occurring and to respond to the
specific needs of students within the
context of the specific school that they
are part of first we always recommend
that schools conduct a comprehensive
bullying survey to find out which
students are experiencing bullying where
it’s occurring when in the school day
it’s most common and how adults in the
schools are responding we work with
schools to implement these surveys and
then to identify school specific
strategies to more effectively address
bullying for example in one of the
schools that we went into students said
that they were often being bullied in
their classrooms when we brought that
information back to teachers some
teachers were really surprised to hear
that students were being bullied in
their classrooms and said that they
didn’t even know it was happening other
teachers said that they knew that
bullying was happening in their
classrooms but they didn’t know what to
do about it or how to respond when we
came in with the information from
students we were able to have powerful
conversations with teachers about what
they could do to identify bullying when
it was happening and to respond more
effectively on the spot when it was
occurring schools are often not aware
what the most common form of bullying is
in the school and this is another way in
which surveys can be helpful and one
partner school administrators and
teachers thought that cyber bullying was
the most common form of bullying and
this makes sense given the number of
news headlines we all see about cyber
bullying however when we ask students
they said that rumors and gossip
spreading were the most common forms of
bullying interestingly research also
shows that cyber bullying is in fact
less common than in-person and in school
bullying results from this survey led to
shifts in conversations about prevention
at this particular school one wrinkle
that our team has found particularly
important is that as we’ve gone into
schools and done surveys we’ve learned
that the way we ask students questions
about being bullied impacts the answers
that we get back so for example if we go
into a school and say have you been
bullied a different group of students
will say yes to that question then if we
go into schools and say have you
experienced repeated victimization like
being teased or excluded or pushed or
shoved that was done on purpose by
someone who’s more powerful than you
such that you can’t make it stop which
is the definition of bullying that’s
used by legislators and educators and
what we’ve learned is that we recommend
that schools not use the word bully in
their surveys when they’re talking to
students but they ask about all of the
defining qualities of bullying of course
not as one question and that that gives
a chance to make sure that students and
educators are on the same page when
students are responding to questions so
this means the way you ask your students
questions about bullying really matters
the challenge then is figuring out how
we can stop bullying
given what we know about the risk
factors associated with bullying how
challenging it can be to measure and ask
about and the potential devastating
consequences so here are three
recommendations for schools first there
are a large number of prevention and
intervention efforts available to
schools but most are not well researched
and many unfortunately don’t work there
are two strategies we know that can be
effective social emotional learning
programs and those aimed at bystanders
bystanders are students who witness
bullying and can intervene at critical
points to stop it if they have the
skills and the confidence to do so in
general evidence-based programs are most
likely to be successful in schools
especially if they’re implemented as
they’re intended to be implemented
second we recommend that schools engage
developmentally appropriate
interventions for students for example
very young students are still learning
about how power dynamics work in
relationships and when young children
engage in behaviors that some would call
bullying we encourage educators to see
these as important opportunities to
teach young children about how to build
healthy relationships how to engage in
effective conflict resolution and about
their own self-regulation in contrast at
the other end of the age range we know
that our bullying prevention programs
are more effective for younger children
than they are for adolescents and we
encourage educators to think about what
they need to do when they’re speaking to
adolescents to make interventions more
effective for example you could imagine
how an intervention for Marla and Jeremy
would need to look different if they
were tenth graders than if their 5th
graders we need to do a better job of
talking to adolescents about the kinds
of victimization that are most common in
adolescents including homophobic
bullying sexual harassment and dating
violence adolescents are also ready to
have conversations about the broader
societal structures like racism and
sexism that reinforce bullying and to
have conversations about the very real
challenges to standing up to peer
and intervening as a bystander third we
recommend that adults pay attention to
the wide range of bullying experiences
across students and across schools the
most effective individual interventions
are those that address the unique needs
of students including potentially other
victimization exposures the most
effective prevention programs are those
that address the unique needs of schools
taking into account school climate and
culture as well as resources as we all
know a one-size-fits-all approach
certainly doesn’t work for clothes and
it also doesn’t work for bullying
prevention look this means that we need
to stop engaging in disciplinary actions
and zero-tolerance policies that we know
don’t stop bullying and they never
address the underlying needs of students
if we know that students who perpetrate
bullying are at increased risk for
attempting or considering suicide we
must act on that knowledge to help them
to not just targets if we know that
students are being bullied in their
classrooms then we need to support
teachers in responding on the spot to
bullying behaviors that they see
occurring and we need to be continually
asking students about their experiences
to find out what they need and whether
prevention and intervention efforts are
effectively addressing these needs thank
you [Applause]