- Recognize, highlight and validate the individual skills, value and abilities of each person.
- Transmit and promote positive and diverse images of children and teens as competent, capable people worthy of respect.
- Develop students’ problem-solving skills. Involve students in decision-making and problem-solving on issues of importance to them. Create opportunities enabling them to make choices.
- Provide students with opportunities to develop, and then draw on internal strengths, skills and abilities (for example, assertiveness).
- Foster non-violent conflict resolution within the school.
- Identify ways of ensuring that the needs and concerns of students are heard and taken seriously.
- Promote a school environment that fosters empathy and is based on respect for differences and a recognition of the rights and responsibilities of all.
- Provide children and teens with opportunities to take initiative and assume responsibilities.
- Foster a school environment based on an attitude of intolerance for all forms of abuse and violence, including bullying, as well as an acknowledgment of the existence of abuse and violence within the school and the community.
- Ensure a common understanding of what constitutes bullying, by adopting a clear definition of abuse and a common language.
- Promote models of healthy, equal interpersonal relationships and encourage the healthy expression of emotions;
- Develop student awareness of laws and resources that protect the rights of young people and encourage students to develop the skills to access that help if needed.
- Foster contact between young people and adult resource people.
- Nurture the development of skills and attitudes leading to increased peer support.
- Provide parents and school staff with opportunities to learn skills and gain knowledge to contribute to bullying prevention.
- Involve parents and community members in school-based initiatives for bullying prevention.
- Create and nurture links and partnerships between the school and groups and individuals working in the community on issues related to bullying prevention.
- Ensure the active presence among students of support resources that are available to them, including internal resources and community resources.
- Foster students’ acquisition of the necessary skills and knowledge to enable them to seek help from resource people when needed.
- Promote the creation of a cohesive school community, founded upon explicitly shared and articulated values, and providing opportunities for exchange, sharing, collaboration and cooperation among all its members.
Examples of bullying prevention strategies that can be used in the elementary classroom.
Strategies and activities that can be used in the secondary classroom.
Some successful strategies created and implemented by schools.
When developing strategies for bullying prevention and intervention, it is important to distinguish between conflict and bullying.