On the Front Lines: Educating Teachers about Bullying and Prevention Methods

Problem statement: Bullying is a serious problem in American schools and is characterized by aggressive behavior distinguished by unequal power and the intention to cause physical, social, or emotional harm to others Bullying is evolving from the classic image of a big schoolyard bully picking on smaller kids to a more technologically, sophisticated model of kids using cyber technology to electronically tease, bully and harass their peers with texting, voicemails, emails and posts on public websites, like Facebook, that are popular with young students. While parents are and should be encouraged and trained to recognize understand the insidious nature of techno bullying, it is not enough. The schools should take an active stance against bullying and this includes training teachers and other personnel to be trained to recognize the signs and to intervene in bullying. Approach: This article discussed a research project undertaken to get assess the following: how educators recognize bullying, what they can do and actually do to intervene as well as their need for more training and autonomy to intervene. Results: There were 145 completed surveys, with 51 partially completed surveys. The results were reported for the completed surveys only. Conclusion: This study examined how well a subset of teachers recognize the signs of cyber/techno bullying as well as their feelings of preparedness to intervene with the bullies and the bullied.