Teaching #Upstander Behavior

This article offers educators and parents tools they can use to create a community of #Upstanders. In my experience as a teacher, my students acted as Upstanders when they were empowered to be assertive about their values and felt supported by their classmates’ collective efforts to create and maintain the community. If my students asked for help with interpersonal conflict, they found it among their peers, who could empathize and offer assistance. Instead of the teacher (me) putting out fires of bullying or conflict, I wanted students to interrupt, report, support conflict resolutions, and check-in with both individuals after the event. This meant releasing control, talking less and listening more, and creating a space for everyone to be heard. In the sections below, I’ve shared some basic ideas about how to begin this work.

Identify and Clarify Your Community Expectations

With your class or group, identify the kind of behaviors and interactions members expect from one another. Take note of specific actions or language that made individuals feel unsafe or threatened in the past. Ask students to consider their own experiences with bullying scenarios in all roles: aggressors, targets, bystanders, or Upstanders.

Begin by brainstorming important shared values that individuals consider to be important;
Use an anonymous pre-survey so that all students feel comfortable sharing;
Frame expectations positively;
If appropriate for age and context, consider creating expectations regarding real or perceived power dynamics, bias, stereotypes, and discrimination;
Guide the group to connect their expectations with shared values;
Explain that all students have a collective responsibility to intervene and respond; discuss ways for individuals to respond, including reporting the behavior to a person of authority.

Example Community Expectation: We choose to reject stereotypes because they lead to prejudiced behavior; they are unfair and harmful. Example Shared Value: We collectively value diversity, equality, justice, and social awareness. Example Collective Responsibility: It is our responsibility as a community to call out and correct stereotypes, bias, prejudice, and discrimination. We will intervene when we feel safe to do so, report the behavior when necessary, and check-in with the targeted individual.

Develop a Collective Responsibility Mindset

Community meetings should promote a collective responsibility, which means that everyone acts in the interest of all other individuals while respectfully holding transgressors responsible. Community meetings offer opportunities for individuals to anonymously discuss bullying or harassment. Community leaders should hold these meetings even if bullying is not being reported because they provide a safe space to discuss the conflict. Holding these meetings is a proactive way to prevent bullying, harassment, and humiliation before it begins. As a facilitator, you can encourage discussion of ways to support both the target and the aggressor while also holding their peers accountable for being kind to one another. If a student is bullying, harassing, or humiliating their peers, hold a group meeting that directly addresses the issue without calling out the aggressor by name, however, leave the problem solving up to the students. As a facilitator you might say: I want everyone to know that in this space we do not use names. Instead, we will focus on how behaviors or actions have impacted our community. Then we can work together to come up with solutions to these issues. Below is one potential process for groups to use when taking collective responsibility for interpersonal conflict and bullying:

Individuals report out to the community about specific behaviors or words anonymously and objectively. For example, “In the past week, I have heard individuals using racial/ethnic slurs that I know to be offensive and harmful to others.” (They should also separately report inappropriate or harmful behaviors and actions directly to a person of authority when it is safe to do so.) Members of the group may also choose to share how this behavior or action has impacted them.
The group takes collective responsibility by discussing ways to act as Upstanders– holding the aggressors accountable and ensuring that they interrupt in similar scenarios if they happen to occur in the future.
If individuals violated community expectations, the group can discuss appropriate ways for the aggressor to make amends, which can then be taken under consideration by a person of authority.

What it Means to Create an Upstander Community

Being a community of Upstanders means that individuals act with both self-awareness. Educators should promote the development of self-awareness by encouraging individuals to honestly know and accept themselves, including their goals and values, as well as the obstacles that they often face. Social awareness, on the other hand, is the ability to take the perspective of and empathize with others. One way to support social awareness is to facilitate effective communication such as active listening skills. Group members should practice sharing their own values, as well as listening to the values of their peers. Combining the teaching of these skills will help your community members communicate and solve an interpersonal conflict. As an educator, parent, student, or colleague, we believe that you have the ability to transform your community into space where #Upstander behavior is the norm. This is possible when everyone has clear expectations that are tied to their values, and a clear sense of how to respond to transgressions. As a group, you can maintain these expectations by checking-in regularly and building rituals that enable group members to communicate about their experiences. In promoting community Upstander behavior, it is your job to help the group arrive at an agreeable solution that meets the needs of all individuals. By doing this, you can empower others to be Upstanders who support and protect one another in an effort to end bullying in all forms.

Teaching #Upstander Behavior