Stopping bullying isn’t easy to do. It’s impossible to do if you don’t know what exactly you are supposed to be doing.
If you are a teacher of children, you need to learn how to get bullies to stop. You need to learn what exactly has to happen so that you can do it. Clearly, winging it, hoping for the best, providing consequences and meaning well aren’t enough. There really is a behavioral protocol that works. If you are a teacher, you should know it. ESPECIALLY if you are an elementary school teacher.
Extinguishing an unwanted behavior, like bullying, is the most difficult of the behavioral modification protocols to get right. There are a bunch of ways for it to go wrong and to accidentally make the situation worse. If you haven’t been taught how exactly to do this and how long it is going to take and what you need to do to monitor the situation, you will fail. It doesn’t matter how well intentioned you are.
The good news is that this is teachable and doable and can be integrated into normal class management. The other good news is that the time investment will pay off dividends fairly quickly. This is especially true if you are teaching the younger grades. Here’s why.
Behaviors are easiest to stop when they are new, before they become habits. Once a behavior is a habit, you can still break the habit, but it is harder to do.
The other good news is that knowing what has to happen, exactly, to get a bully to stop, will help you help the kids you teach more effectively. Because this doesn’t just apply to bullying, it applies to all behaviors.
I have a lot of free material on this site as well as a free program – why bullies bully and how to stop them. I also have a book which goes into detail on the behavioral conditioning techniques and how to use them effectively to help bullies stop. So please, check out this material. Learn it, use it and share it with others. Join the site and encourages others to as well.