How to Stop Bullying in Schools

Rogelio Valdés

Mar 17, 2022

After speaking with students and parents in our school community, I realized that many of our students had experienced bullying in previous schools. I started reflecting on why we do not have those same problems in our school, and I realized that the learning methodology we created has become a very strong way to prevent and counter bullying. Today I want to explain how other schools could apply parts of what we do in order to build a healthier community.

Group dynamics

I am sure that in most cases teachers genuinely try in many ways to stop bullying. The problem is that the incentives inside a traditional school are often not aligned with that goal, and group dynamics end up moving in the opposite direction.

In a traditional school, the main objective is often to make the group average as high as possible on standardized tests. We become what we measure, and as counterintuitive as it sounds, making that the primary metric actually pulls us away from real academic growth for each individual student.

The group dynamic required to raise the average score does not leave much room for personalized learning. Because the whole class must move at a steady pace, it becomes far more urgent for the teacher to solve the doubts of students who are falling behind academically than to stop and resolve conflicts between classmates. And again, that is often not negligence. Teachers are simply racing against time because “the exams are next week.”

If success were measured instead through individual growth, where each student is expected to compete with their own previous level, then resolving peer conflict would become a priority. Because when bullying exists, learning is damaged on both sides, for the victim and for the bully. Even if one of them still has excellent grades, imagine how much more they could learn if so much of their day were not being drained by conflict.

I am not against standardized testing or against measuring classroom averages. But those should not be the main metric if they end up determining the entire group dynamic.

Social-emotional development

I have said this before. In an in-person school, social-emotional development often happens naturally, and sometimes by accident. Schools do not need to plan student interaction because children socialize on their own. Borrowing a pencil, playing during recess, having an argument, these are all natural moments of social growth.

Online, those interactions do not happen on their own. That is why children taking conventional Zoom classes often feel like they are not socializing. From the beginning, we saw this as a key issue if we wanted to be an online school, so we designed a set of activities specifically to promote social-emotional development. And I do not just mean group projects. I will talk about those next.

We use debates, Socratic dialogue, games, challenges, and simulations that place students in different situations. In those spaces, they need to negotiate, communicate effectively, listen to others, take other perspectives into account, persuade, and learn how to change their minds.

You probably learned to negotiate at recess when you convinced your classmates to play something else. That is why adults often say things like “I learned that on the street” or “nobody taught me that.” Schools should also play a role in teaching those skills. We are doing that online. In person, it is even easier.

Teamwork

Now let’s talk about group work and projects. Almost all schools already include teamwork as part of the curriculum, and that is a good thing. The problem is once again the objective behind those activities.

It is very common for group work to be designed mainly around acquiring academic knowledge. If only the final product or grade is measured, you end up with teams where a few students do all the work while tension builds among the others.

We need group work to actively promote and measure social-emotional development. We need students to really work as a team. In the long run, it matters more that they learned how to collaborate than whether they memorized the periodic table in that exact moment.

Group size

Finally, if we continue educating students in groups of 20 to 30, even after changing all the factors above, bullying will still exist. It is impossible for one teacher or mentor to guide and support every conflict that emerges in groups that large.

We work with groups of 10 students per mentor. Even 15 can still work. But once groups get close to 20, they become too large to provide truly personalized education and attention.

Final thoughts

At Robin, we have spent years developing a methodology based on collaboration, healthy competition, teamwork, and above all, personalized learning. Our original goal was not to eliminate bullying, but over time we realized that this combination became the perfect recipe for preventing it.

That does not mean there are never conflicts. Conflict is normal and, in fact, necessary for social-emotional growth. The difference is that these are conflicts that move toward healthy resolution.

If you are part of a school or you are a parent dealing with bullying and you want to change that, you can write to us at hola@robinacademy.com. We would be happy to share parts of the methodology we have used to build an elementary and middle school where bullying does not take hold.