Have you heard that bullying in schools is just a part of life? That kids just need to grow a thicker skin and learn how to deal with it? Bullying is a serious issue for the entire school community, and the longer it goes on, the more pain it causes. It’s important that school employees are trained to properly recognize and respond to incidents of bullying before the problem can escalate.

What Is Bullying?

Before learning to solve the problem, it is important to understand exactly what bullying is. Abusive situations that are defined as bullying have three characteristics:

1)Harm - Someone gets hurt either physically, socially, or emotionally.

2)Unfair Match - One person or group does not have the physical, verbal, or social skills to effectively contest the other person or group

3)Repeated – The harm and unfair match are repeated over a period of time.

Other situations can certainly be abusive and harmful, but the combination of these three criteria makes bullying especially damaging to the life and personality of anyone, particularly young people.

Bullying also includes electronic attacks, known as "Cyberbullying," and is experiencing rapid growth in our schools. Cyberbullying occurs when a bully or group of bullies use communication technologies – such as cell phones and computers – in a way that meets the definition of bullying. Voice messages, email, text messages, and web sites are just a few examples of the tools that Cyberbullies are using. The result is an increase in the frequency of bullying, school violence and suicide among students.

Consequences of Bullying

Bullying creates a climate of fear and tension that affects everyone and reduces the ability to work and learn to maximum potential.

•One in five high school students report that they avoid the restroom out of anxiety about safety.

•One-quarter million students report being physically attacked each month.

•60 percent of high school students report thoughts of suicide.

Bullying is a problem facing all shareholders in the school district. It occurs at all age levels and within both sexes, and it can have lifelong effects on bullies, victims and bystanders.

Victims are clearly hurt by bullying. Young bystanders who witness bullying can be confused over whether and how to intervene. Adults also suffer from the negative school climate that bullying can create. They may feel tension over how to deal with the situation.

Bullies who don’t learn better ways of dealing with their aggression may eventually face serious consequences at the hands of their peers. Bullying is an early step in the continuum of violence. When bullying goes unchecked, it can lead to worse behaviors, such as using weapons, sexually harassing others and even murder or suicide. School districts can choose to educate on these issues early and stem the problems before they grow, or deal with serious incidents later on.

The good news is that by dealing with bullying and the associated issues of teasing, harassment and ostracism, we can help prevent potential disasters from happening. We can use the same school safety programs that effectively teach youth how to be good friends, caring individuals and good citizens.

SafeSchools.com offers an online training course for school employees called "Bullying: Recognition & Response," which teaches employees how to properly recognize bullying situations and prepares them to respond. Other appropriate courses in the SafeSchools library are "Online Safety: Cyberbullying" and "Online Safety: What Every Educator Needs to Know."