Bully Prevention


The EYES Initiative: A Comprehensive Approach to Address Bias and Bullying (Bully Prevention at Scale)

Empowering Youth Engaging School (EYES)

The Empowering Youth Engaging School (EYES) Initiative supports school leaders in effectively addressing bias, bullying, and other hurtful behaviors within their buildings and school communities. This three-year initiative engages and empowers youth and communities to create safer schools by recognizing and reducing bias-based bullying behaviors.

EYES represents the culmination of a three-year pilot in five Illinois middle schools that led to significant decreases in student perceptions of bullying perpetration and victimization, meaningful decreases in bullying victimization, and sustained or improved school climate over the course of the project period.

Beginning in Spring 2018, NSCC will partner with Facing History and Ourselves to implement the EYES Initiative. We are looking to scale EYES implementation nationally over the next few years.

The EYES initiative directly addresses bias-based bullying by:

  • Partnering with Facing History and Ourselves to develop and integrate evidence-based curricula for social studies, humanities, and language arts courses
  • Targeting adolescents’ academic skills, empathy, tolerance, and agency
  • Building school improvement supports across all layers of school



Professional Development: Build Capacity and Increase Impact

Bullying is one of the most common findings emerging from school climate survey data. Students report feeling significantly less socially and physically safe than adults realize. NSCC provides professional development sessions for school and district leaders to increase knowledge and skillsets to effectively address bullying behaviors and promote upstander behaviors. Trainings are grounded in NSCC’s comprehensive approach to school climate improvement. As part of this package, school and district leaders work with NSCC staff who provide support by doing the following:

  • Raising awareness on what is bullying behavior (spectrum of mean and cruel behaviors), the role power imbalances play in bullying, and how to recognize it
  • Identifying strategies to intervene when bullying incidents occur and ways to prevent them, such as restorative, trauma-informed, as well as social and emotional practices
  • Reviewing the school’s code of conduct, norms, and agreements
  • Supporting adults in empowering students to take a leadership role in anti-bullying efforts

To learn more, please contact us [email protected]

Breaking the Bully-Victim-Bystander Cycle Tool Kit

The Breaking the Bully-Victim-Bystander Cycle Tool Kit is designed to support students, educators, parents, and community members in their efforts to prevent bully-victim behavior and promote a community of Upstanders. This Tool Kit provides practical, comprehensive facilitation resources to create safe, supportive schools. It has been used by schools, districts, school networks, and State Departments of Education across the country. Its resources are organized around following themes:

  1. Understand what a comprehensive bully prevention and upstander effort means, and why it is important
  2. Create a shared vision for the type of school community that you would like to be
  3. Build trusting and collaborative team relationships to lay the foundation for your efforts
  4. Assess your school’s current strengths and areas for improvement
  5. Consider essential leadership questions
  6. Teach and learn with students in classrooms, morning meetings, advisories, and other small group experiences
  7. Engage diverse stakeholder groups and support school-home-community partnerships
  8. Sustain your efforts over time
For an order size of 1-9 copies: $90 each copy plus shipping and handling
For an order size of 10 more copies: $50 each copy plus shipping and handling

To order your copy today, please contact [email protected]

BullyBust: Promoting a Community of Upstanders

The National School Climate Center's BullyBust: Promoting a Community of Upstanders is a nationwide campaign that has reached 4,500 schools. BullyBust provides free supports to schools to help students and adults become part of the solution to end harmful harassment, teasing, and violence in our nation's schools. The BullyBust website gives schools access to videos and concrete, research-based resources that educate adults and youth on how to take a stand against bullying and create a positive community of Upstanders—people who recognize when bullying occurs and safely act to address the situation. Through BullyBust, schools can do the following:

Join the nationwide BullyBust community to make your voice count!
https://www.bullybust.org/