For optimal results, 6 hours of instructional time is needed, excluding lunch and breaks. Training is hands-on and interactive, and includes lecture, large group activities, small group activities, video clips, role-play, and guided practice. The following topics are covered in a staff training:
- Statistics on youth aggression and why we are seeing an increase in peer mistreatment
- Helping staff build consensus on the definition of “peer mistreatment” or “aggression” that can be used by all school personnel to build a new normative culture of nonviolence
- Reviewing the ways that staff, parents, and students unwittingly and unintentionally enable youth to use mean behavior/aggression to get their needs met, and how to change entitlement, tolerance, and enabling.
- The research on why adults and other students don’t intervene more often when a student is experiencing aggression and bullying, and how to change this dynamic.
- Helping staff reach consensus on where to consistently intervene on an aggression continuum.
- A series of role-plays showing staff how to intervene when they witness aggression directly, how to respond when a target or bystander approaches them to report an incident that the staff did not see directly, and opportunities to practice these skills.
- The differences between normal peer conflict and bullying, and how to respond to each.
- Psychological profile, family history, and temperament of students who chronically bully others, as well as the characteristics of those who bully under certain circumstances.
- Gender differences in bullying, including the latest research on how to impact on the relational aggression that girls engage in with other girls.
- Aggression in cyberspace and how schools can respond even when it occurs off-campus.
- Typical responses of targets (passive, provocative, reactive) and understanding the “resilient” target
- Research on short and long-term effects of bullying on targets, bystanders, and the students acting aggressively
- System-wide, classroom-based, and one-on-one strategies for reducing mean behavior and enhancing positive relationships between students
- How to activate bystanders to help targets, including demonstration of these strategies
- Simple ways to infuse empathy training into the core curriculum
- Strategies for increasing positive feeling tone in schools, providing positive behavior support, and developing consensus on behaviorally specific expectations for students in high risk areas (hallway, lunchroom, playground, bathroom, bus, locker rooms)
- Research-based strategies proven to strengthen the bond between students and staff, enhance school climate, tolerance for others, and compassion
- Small group practice acknowledging positive changes in aggressive students, targets, and bystanders using behaviorally specific and non-evaluative feedback
- Rubric-based approach to consequences for aggressive behavior – consequences that are consistent, predictable, inevitable, and gradually escalating the components needed to develop a comprehensive policy on addressing aggression and bullying in school and cyberspace
- A series of role-plays demonstrating “target hardening” strategies for targets of aggressive behavior to help make them less vulnerable to future aggression
- Strategies to address staff-to-staff, staff-to-student, and parent-to-staff bullying.
