How can schools prevent bullying and create safe learning environments? Bullying prevention consultant for the Pennsylvania Department of Education Mary Dolan gave an overview of the issue during her bullying prevention and adolescent mental health lecture at 11 a.m. Wednesday, Feb. 28, in Gibble Auditorium.

The lecture was geared towards future educators, especially those who want to work with adolescents. Dolan felt the lecture was also timely since it took place two weeks after the Parkland, Florida shooting Wednesday, Feb. 14.

“You are the most important audience that I have ever spoken to,” Dolan said.
With school shootings like Parkland, Dolan felt that future educators needed to hear her lecture now more than ever. She wanted the audience to learn how to prevent bullying and decrease violence in schools.

Dolan also felt this audience was her most important because many students in attendance grew up with lockdown drills and bullying prevention classes.

She asked everyone born in or after 1999 to raise their hands to emphasize the number of audience members who have grown up and gone to school after the deadly Columbine shooting in 1999, which led to changes in school policies like lockdown drills.

To prevent bullying and school violence, Dolan felt educators must first understand the terms associated with bullying.

Instead of “victim,” she used the term “target.” In place of “bullies,” she used the phrase “those who display bullying behavior.”

Dolan believed these alternative terms prevent the students involved from being defined by the bullying. She also made a distinction between the terms “bullying” and “conflict.” Conflict is a disagreement between equals, while bullying involves an imbalance of power and is one-sided.

Dolan emphasized that conflict resolution strategies do not work for bullying. Instead, the target and the student displaying bullying behaviors both need separate, individual interventions.

Dolan explained what an intervention could look like by using the Olweus Bullying Circle, which describes the students involved or witnessing a bullying situation as having specific roles.

These roles are the students who bully, the followers, the supporters, the passive supporters, the disengaged onlookers, the possible defenders, the defenders and the student who is bullied.

Dolan asked eight volunteers to come to the front and act out these roles. Seven volunteers formed a semi-circle around the volunteer playing the student who is bullied. The volunteers read lines from notecards provided by Dolan to simulate a bullying situation.

At the end of this simulation, Dolan showed how students can intervene by shifting the focus and the power away from the student who bullies. She had the defender and possible defender talk with the student who is bullied and invite them to hang out.

The other roles joined them to hang out instead of actively or passively supporting the student who bullies. This took away that student’s power and left them alone for a separate intervention.

The student who is bullied and the student who bullies both need help, according to Dolan. Bullying has lifelong consequences for both sides, such as a higher risk of negative outcomes like incarceration. That is why Dolan feels it is important to understand why students bully.

“We all need power, but why is the student who bullies trying to get it in this very anti-social way?” Dolan said.

She gave possible explanations like being bullied and feeling powerless at home.

Dolan continued her lecture by talking about the importance of professional development and bullying prevention courses for educators.

Currently, these types of courses are not required in Pennsylvania, but Dolan feels they are necessary for educators to learn how to intervene in a bullying situation and to prevent bullying.

Dolan recalled giving a two-day workshop on bullying prevention to educators at a Pennsylvania school.

When she reached the slide about adults who bully, she remembers a man turning to his colleague and apologizing for his bullying behavior.

Because of this and other experiences, she feels that schools should train their staff in bullying prevention, even if it is not a state requirement.

Dolan ended the lecture by differentiating between bullying prevention and suicide prevention.
Although she feels they are connected, Dolan believes schools need both.

“Bullying can be the straw that breaks the camel’s back, but don’t lump them [bullying and suicide] together,” Dolan said.

The Elizabethtown College chapter of Psi Chi, an international honor society for psychology majors and minors, sponsored Dolan’s lecture.

President of Psi Chi and senior Ally Killen attended the event and felt she learned a lot about the state legislation behind bullying prevention programs, many of which Dolan helped write.

“Mary Dolan gave a great summary,” Killen said. “It opened me up to learn the specifics.”

Dolan said that she normally covers the material presented in the lecture during a semester-long course and suggested that students who want to learn the specifics should visit positivediscipline.com and violencepreventionworks.org.