What can educators do about bullying by school staff?

Linda Starr has written an essential article for educators titled: "Are You a Bully?"

And Dr. Dan Olweus spoke about this topic at the National Bullying Prevention conference in Atlanta GA (October 2005). His research has found that when we ask students if they have been bullied by a teacher, half the reports we get seem genuine. His criteria for screening out spurious reports were:

Clearly unrealistic descriptions of the teacher behavior: "My teacher crushed my skull." "My teacher hung me up by the ears." reported by only one student in a class but not corroborated by any other students in that class.
very brief and unrepeated events of low intensity.

Dr. Olweus defined teacher bullying in this research as: "teachers using degrading negative comments openly about a student or students."

After screening responses, his research (done in the mid- 1990s) found that 11-12% of students reported bullying by peers, while 1.5-2% reported bullying by teachers, with the numbers reporting teacher bullying increasing as students got older. Interestingly, he did not find a correlation between any one young person being bullied by a teacher and that same young person being bullied by a peer- so his research suggests that teacher bullying does not set up students to then be bullied by their peers. This might not be the case, I believe, if the teacher explicitly invited peers to bully the target or talked critically about the target to the class rather than insulting the target directly.

Dr. Olweus found that half of students reporting teacher bullying said the teacher bullied all the students in the class, while half said that the teacher singled out one or a few students. He hypothesized that- barring extreme behavior- the latter type of bullying might be even more damaging, because in a class where the teacher bullies all the students they may be more able to console themselves by concluding that they have a crazy or mean teacher. A sole target may be more likely to believe that there is something wrong with him or her.

Here are some interventions I would suggest schools use to reduce teacher bullying:

- Work together as a staff to create a code of conduct for staff. Which methods of discipline, building motivation, and feedback are acceptable? Which cross the line into bullying? Which behavior toward colleagues is out of line? When staff discuss and agree on these standards, adult bullies are less likely to believe that their practices are supported by their peers. This code of conduct can become part of teacher evaluation instruments as well.

- Make sure administrators know about incidents and patterns of teacher bullying. As with sexual harassment, there should be clear definitions of unacceptable behaviors, ways to report, and protection from reprisals for good faith reporting. A code of silence will not serve our students any better than the code of silence that used to surround sexual harassment, It may be important for staff to report teacher bullying as a group to reduce vulnerability to reprisals by the adult who bullies.

- Work out ways all staff can let each other know when they see anyone have a momentary lapse into angry or otherwise hurtful behavior toward students. Sometimes these ways will be based on a code phrase or other signal.

- Survey staff and students periodically about school climate. Include questions about whether staff are treating students respectfully. Look also for bullying from administrator to staff (and vice versa), school board and community toward staff (and vice versa), and staff toward each other.