COLUMBIA — An anti-bullying poster on a classroom wall can promote awareness but alone does not prevent the repetitive, abusive behaviors some students use to harm other students physically or emotionally.
“That’s not enough,” Dr. Nathan Carnes recently told an orientation class of the University of South Carolina senior education majors who will begin their yearlong internships in middle school classrooms this fall. “It can be the beginning, but don’t just let the bullying sign in your classroom do your work.”
To help the students get to work preventing bullying, Carnes gave them – and all teachers - information to identify students who are bullies, students who are being bullied and strategies for counteracting bullying behavior. The S.C. Department of Education mandates bully prevention training for student teaching interns to establish safe learning environments and health.
Carnes defined bullying as repetitive, direct or indirect behaviors, including teasing, taunting, threatening, hitting, spreading rumors and socially isolating other students.
Recent studies have indicated that one in three middle school students will either bully other students or become a victim of a bully, Carnes said.
“If it’s ongoing, if it’s hurtful, if there is someone in power and there is a victim, that’s when we suspect bullying,” Carnes said. “Bullying is directed. There is intent to endanger someone, and there is intent to tear someone down. It’s always negative, and it intends to destroy. That’s what bullying is about.”
Carnes outlined warning signs that children might be bullying others as follows:
• They tease, threaten or physically abuse other children.
• They are hot-tempered, impulsive and have a hard time following the rules.
• They are aggressive towards adults.
• They are tough and show no sympathy toward children who are bullied.
Some signs that students might be victims of bullying are as follows:
• They have few friends.
• They seem afraid to go to school and complain of headaches, stomach pains or other symptoms or physical illness.
• They seem sad, anxious, depressed or moody.
• They are quiet, sensitive, passive and have poor self-esteem.
Carnes said boys and girls display bullying tendencies differently.
Boys are more likely to engage in direct bullying.
“Direct bullying is generally face-to-face,” Carnes said.
Intimidation is part of direct bullying, said Carnes, adding that a student demanding another student’s lunch money is a classic example.
“It’s about having control,” he said. “It’s about maintaining control over a person and manipulating an individual.”
Girls are more likely to engage in indirect bullying by spreading rumors or enforcing social isolation by excluding others from a group. While indirect bullying might not be physically harmful, it could cause emotional pain.
“Indirect bullying in its intent and sometimes the act is not readily apparent,” said Carnes, adding that “generally, cyberbullying is considered indirect bullying for the most part.”
Carnes said observation is the key to addressing bullying and bullies in the classroom.
“It’s about observing students carefully, noticing them, interacting with them, getting some insight into who they are as individuals,” he said.
Sharp changes in students’ behavior – losing excitement about learning, asking to go to the bathroom frequently, becoming gloomy, wearing dark clothes, wanting to be alone, isolating themselves from others – could indicate students are being bullied, Carnes said.
When teachers observe those behaviors, they need to draw those students in through classroom and schoolwide activities, special-interest clubs, and sports, for example.
“We want to draw in the child as much as possible because the intent is to educate the whole child, not just the academic part but emotionally, socially, intellectually – all those kinds of things bring them in,” Carnes said. “It’s like Velcro. The more Velcro you have, the more it will stick.”
When students become terse and begin having difficulty with authority figures, their behavior could indicate they are becoming bullies, said Carnes, adding that teachers can counter tendencies that cause students to become bullies with pro-social behavior.
Bullies often want a sense of achievement or accomplishment, and “if they get that out of beating up somebody, they’ve reached or met their need, but it’s in an antisocial way.”
Carnes said teachers and the school community must disrupt those behaviors and provide the bullies with other ways to satisfy their needs.
“Pro-social behaviors are behaviors that are appropriate, such as showing compassion for others, being courteous, valuing diversity, praising individuals, reveling in the accomplishments of others – thinking outside of one’s self,” Carnes said.
Engaging students in a nurturing community and getting to know them also counter bullying, Carnes said.
“Community is about everybody matters,” he said. “It’s good to greet our students as they come in the door.”
Carnes also said teachers should contact every parent within the first three days of school.
“One year, when I had 172 students, I worked really hard and contacted every parent with a positive comment. It had a powerful impact,” he said. “I had so many parents on my side that some of my colleagues asked why so many parents supported me. When you work hard at it, you win them over.”
Carnes said schools and teachers must establish a policy of zero tolerance for bullying and rein in bullying behaviors before they “grow into something bigger.”
“Speaking from a middle-level perspective, the bigger something becomes, the harder it is to remedy it,” he said. “The best thing to do is to catch it when it’s as small as possible and make corrections.”
Carnes cautioned that teachers when working with bullies, must be careful not to mimic or model their bullying behavior.
“That will drive the bullies the wrong way,” he said. “What we have to do is break that cycle. A concrete example would be, when a bully becomes violent or engages in violence, to treat that bully in a manner in which they are respected and they receive, should I say, love.
“That would be a pro-social behavior, and engaging them in that behavior would be a way to pull them out rather than being punitive because that would continue to drive them.”
Carnes compared using pro-social behavior to root our bullying to removing a thorn from a finger.
“If you put pressure on it trying to get it out, you’re driving it deeper into your finger,” he said. “What you have to do is work around it, not to drive it deeper but to pull it out.”
