Empowering Bystanders: Challenging Students and Schools to Stand Up to Bullying and Cruelty

Topic Area: Bullying and Violence Prevention

Type: Keynote or Workshop

Workshop Description:
For too many students, school is a place where cruelty and harassment are the norm and bullying is an accepted rite of passage. Though the cost of this mistreatment is high, adults often ignore the role youth can play in preventing and stopping the bullying, verbal abuse, intolerance and deliberate exclusion that surround them daily. Young people see, hear, and know things adults don't, and can intervene in ways adults can't. Therefore, we must empower and equip youth with the skills to address mistreatment and injustice when they see it.

In this session, participants will learn how empowering and equipping diverse and socially influential student leaders with non-violent communication skills can reduce bullying and other mistreatment, increase attendance and improve academic performance.

Objectives:
Participants attending this session will:

• Understand the scope of the problem of peer mistreatment and violence, and its impact on students, staff, and educational processes;
• Understand the roles students can effectively play in school safety planning and implementation, and how to integrate these into a comprehensive school climate improvement effort;
• Review obstacles – and solutions – to youth involvement;
• Identify the components of effective models – and best practices – for engaging youth in reducing cruelty, bullying and violence.

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