Quit It!
A Teacher’s Guide on Teasing and Bullying
for Use with Students in Grades K-3

Merle Froschl, Barbara Sprung, and Nancy Mullin-Rindler
A joint publication of Educational Equity Concepts, Wellesley College Center
for Research on Women, and NEA Professional Library, 1998

Review by Pat Hoertdoerfer
Children, Family and Intergenerational Programs Director
Lifespan Faith Development, UUA
Boston, MA

Teasing and bullying are facts of life for young people. Ask any parent, any elementary school teacher, or any children’s community leader and they will tell you that this kind of behavior is a daily occurrence.

Recently Educational Equity Concepts and the Wellesley College Center for Research on Women conducted research on teasing and bullying in students’ life in kindergarten through grade three. Findings of their year-long study paralleled other formal research studies conducted both within and outside the United States. These findings included the following:

• Teasing and bullying are frequent occurrences in elementary school classrooms;
• Boys initiate most of the teasing and bullying incidents, but both boys and girls are the recipients;
• Boys are more likely to respond physically, while girls are more likely to respond verbally to incidents initiated against them;
• Teachers and other adults frequently do not intervene – their predominant response is to remain uninvolved;
• Children feel that adults do not pay attention or support them in ways that resolve the teasing and bullying;
• Children want adults to become more involved.

Quit It! was written to address these concerns and to provide teachers and parents of grades K-3 children with a proactive, gender-sensitive approach to addressing teasing and bullying. Authors of this guide were concerned with teasing and bullying as a continuum of intentionally hurtful behavior. Teasing and bullying behavior is defined from mildly annoying behavior to disparaging language and taking someone’s possessions to abusive language, physical contact, or intentional exclusion.

The primary messages of this guide are that adults in the community – teachers and leaders, staff and administrators, parents and family – need to become aware of the importance of taking teasing and bullying seriously and must commit themselves to doing something about it. Some general strategies that they promote in creating safe and welcoming learning environments that foster self-respect and respect for others include:

• Intervening with children when an incident occurs;
• Integrating discussions and activities about teasing and bullying into your learning opportunities;
• Providing help for children in developing skills in empathy, problem solving, and anger management;
• Creating opportunities for cooperative learning across the age-span and intergenerational community;
• Providing opportunities for boys and girls to work, learn, and play together.

The authors know that children learn to read the true arrangement of power in society by watching how adults around them act and resolve problems. They learn whether the principles of fairness and equality apply equally to all people. This guide addresses these issues in proactive ways and helps teachers and parents create welcoming and safe environments for all children, regardless of their gender, race, ethnicity, disability, class, or any other individual difference that might make them the target of teasing and bullying.

Quit It! is organized into three major themes and supplemented with sections on physical games and exercises, problem-solving techniques, and an excellent annotated bibliography. The authors have arranged the themes sequentially, starting with “Creating Our Rules” and proceeding to “Talking about Teasing and Bullying and Exploring Courage” in turn. Each theme contains the following elements: goals, background, lessons, problem-solving scenarios, literature connections, and letters to families.

Sample lesson: Where I Feel Safe/Unsafe from Theme 2: Talking About Teasing and Bullying Goal: Children to identify areas of the classroom and school where they feel safe and unsafe.

Brainstorm children’s responses to what makes them feel welcome and unwelcome in the school. List on newsprint the places in the classroom, on the playground, and throughout the school where they feel safe or unsafe.

Create a map of the classroom/school by asking children to build with Lego blocks their classroom, playground, and school building. Then ask children, one at a time, to place their “safe” figure (Playmobile people) inside the structures where they feel safe and to place their green Lego cube inside the structures where they feel unsafe.

Invite the children to draw some conclusions from their map with these questions:

• Why do you think this area is safe?
• What area makes you feel most unsafe? Why?
• What can we do to make these areas feel safer for everyone?

Help children develop a plan for how they can work together to make the classroom and playground safer places for everyone.

Teasing and bullying are pervasive problems in the lives of children in the United States today. The problem will not go away with one discussion in school or in one religious education program. Children need support and practice at home, in school, and in religious education programs to respond successfully to teasing and bullying situations. Quit It! is designed to be used in these contexts in an ongoing way. The themes and topics need to be revisited, using a variety of different activities, techniques, and approaches throughout the year and year to year.

Quit It! is an excellent resource for religious educators and parents to use in RE classes, parent support groups, and family education programs. This guide can be ordered from Educational Equity Concepts (www.edequity.org or 212-243-1110) or Wellesley College Center for Research on Women (www.wcwonline.org or 781-283-2500).