Bullying can threaten students’ physical and emotional safety at school and can negatively impact their ability to learn. The best way to address bullying is to stop it before it starts. There are a number of things school staff can do to make schools safer and prevent bullying.

Assess Bullying In Your School Assess school prevention and intervention efforts around student behavior, including substance use and violence. You may be able to build upon them or integrate bullying prevention strategies. Many programs help address the same protective and risk factors that bullying programs do. Conduct assessments in your school to determine how often bullying occurs, where it happens, how students and adults intervene, and whether your prevention efforts are working.

'My name is Abigail. I was a pretty happy, go-lucky kind of girl. I had my friends, acquaintances and a few people who I didn't particularly like, but no one was my enemy...

Well, my 5th grade year, my family went through a devastating house fire. It left us homeless and nowhere to go. My friend who had been with me 9 years got mad because I was getting more attention" then her. So she start causing issues with other people around me. All the while I became really sick, and the doctors ended up finding 2 tumors in my chest. At 10-11 years old thats like a nightmare in reality. The whole time my "friend" ignoring me and making people dislike me, saying that I was being a drama queen. Although I had a smile on my face, I was slowly on a one-way train to depression...

(Article found at bullyingstatistics.com)

There are many types of negative physical interactions that can occur between young people, including fighting, practical jokes, stealing, & sexual harassment. These things are not considered physical bullying unless:  The same victim is targeted repeatedly; The bully or bullies intend to hurt, embarrass, or intimidate the victim; The actions occur in a situation with a real or perceived imbalance of power, such as when the bully is stronger than the victim or has a higher social standing.

In this context, physical bullying can take many forms:

Hitting; Pushing; Tripping; Slapping; Spitting;Stealing & destroying possessions, including books, clothing, or lunch money. Physical bullying may also cross the line into sexual harassment or sexual assault...

Today; being the second addition to 1906's new official site I wanted to discuss warning signs. Warning signs are very important because they are the start of a very unhealthy victim. If you can tell someone is being bullied in a early stage. You have a great chance of preventing future harm to that person. 1906's motto is 'an ounce of prevention, is better than a pound of cure' so I edited a list of behavior you may notice is someone who might be being bullied. No matter what age, these symptoms are known to reflect on everyone. If you have seen some of the signs below on a person you know, talk to them. Try to get them to open up to you. And if that does not work; Tell an adult. This might make you feel like you are getting into other people's personal business. But if bullying is taken too far, it can and will cause a great amount of damage to this person, not only emotionally, but physically... Click Read More to see the list.