Designing a School Bullying Support Group: A 10-Week Plan
This paper presents a structured plan for a closed, ten-week support group addressing school bullying. The group is designed to serve a broad population, including students, parents, teachers, school administrators, and community members. Drawing on best practices such as the Whole School Approach, Social and Emotional Learning, and brief therapy, the paper outlines week-by-week session goals, activities, and resources. Topics progress from establishing classroom agreements and defining bullying to legal awareness, role-playing, and program evaluation. The paper also addresses group leadership skills, cultural inclusivity, member selection rationale, and methods for assessing program effectiveness and community impact.
- Population, Purpose, and Group Type: Who the group serves and its goals
- Member Selection and Group Structure: How members are chosen and group format
- Best Practices in Bullying Prevention: Evidence-based frameworks guiding the group
- Ten-Week Session Plan: Week-by-week goals, activities, and resources
- Leadership, Diversity, and Facilitation Considerations: Skills, cultural fit, and session-length rationale
- Program Evaluation: Methods for assessing outcomes and community impact
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What makes this paper effective
- The paper provides a clearly structured, week-by-week session plan with explicit goals, time allocations, resources, and activities, making it practical and immediately usable.
- It integrates multiple stakeholder perspectives — students, parents, teachers, administrators, and community members — and thoughtfully addresses the power dynamics that may arise among them.
- The evaluation section is thorough, addressing planning effectiveness, goal attainment, participant impact, and community-level outcomes with concrete assessment methods for each.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper demonstrates applied curriculum design grounded in evidence-based practice. It connects theoretical frameworks — brief therapy, Social and Emotional Learning, and the Whole School Approach — directly to specific session activities, showing how academic concepts translate into real-world group facilitation. This theory-to-practice linkage is supported by cited literature throughout.
Structure breakdown
The paper is organized into four sections: Section One establishes the group's population, purpose, type, membership criteria, and evidence base. Section Two delivers the ten-week session curriculum with week-by-week detail. Section Three reflects on facilitation decisions, including session length rationale, curriculum design choices, leadership skills, and cultural inclusivity. Section Four presents a multi-dimensional evaluation framework covering planning, objectives, participant impact, and community impact.
Population, Purpose, and Group Type
The group is designed to serve students of a school where bullying has occurred, as well as the broader school community — including students, staff, and administrators. Local community members such as physicians and health professionals are also welcome, and individuals who are professional counselors may have useful contributions to offer. The group will additionally serve students' families, friends, and the wider community. Each of these individuals can contribute to a group dialogue about bullying from a different perspective. The most significant challenge at the outset is empowering individuals — particularly students — to speak frankly not only in front of their peers, but also in the presence of perceived authority figures.
Parental involvement is important so that parents can address issues their children have experienced concerning bullying; parents are also likely to both contribute to and learn from the group. Teacher participation will benefit students by supporting those who have been bullied and communicating to those who bully that such behavior is unacceptable. Students involved in the group will come to understand the harmful effects of bullying. Peers play an important role since they were present during such incidents. Research indicates that peers who observed a bullying incident can be either part of the solution or part of the problem (Lodge, 2008). The school principal can exercise his or her authority to prevent bullying-related incidents. Principals who place bullying prevention as a top priority are in a position to facilitate adequate support for implementing anti-bullying programs (Sandals, Auty, Hughes, & Pepler, 2005).
Anticipated problem: A highly open-ended group ranging from students and their peers to families, school staff, and administrators may encounter issues related to perceived authority. For example, students may feel nervous or uncomfortable speaking honestly in front of authority figures. Moreover, with such a diverse group, specific activities of interest to one segment may not necessarily engage others. This will require insight and careful planning on the part of the group leader to ensure that those not directly involved in a given activity do not simply disengage, but remain included.
Bullying is commonplace in junior and senior high schools, with younger students generally reporting bullying incidents more frequently than adults. Both boys and girls report bullying incidents, particularly those involving harassment and insult. Girls tend to be most affected by bullying overall. Boys generally bully in physical ways, while girls tend to bully in non-physical ways. Family support is important in determining whether a person is experiencing bullying, and a family's ability to resolve conflicts carries significant influence (Lodge, 2008). The group's central aim is to prevent bullying incidents from occurring in the first place, thereby avoiding the long-term effects of bullying.
This support group is best characterized as an example of applied brief therapy, a concept developed in the United States over the past several decades. Brief therapy has a powerful impact in both clinical and educational settings. It was developed as a response to psychoanalysis, which was considered excessively lengthy. Reducing the number of sessions proved surprisingly effective, producing better and more focused therapeutic outcomes (Young, 1998).
Member Selection and Group Structure
The school principal would be a regular attendee. Parents would join based on personal or family interest, or general concern about the issue; some parents may need to be actively encouraged to attend. Teachers are expected to participate so that they can support both their own students and others. Students could be selected through elections or allowed to volunteer; student participants may then organize activities to help their peers learn about bullying prevention.
This is a closed-ended group, meaning it begins and ends on specific dates and follows a planned sequence of treatment modules. Some modules are designed to provide basic information about a particular clinical or diagnostic issue, while others focus on the development of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) strategies and coping skills. After covering basic concepts and strategies, group therapy moves toward evidence-based, individualized treatment planning. Because each week builds on the previous session, participants must commit to the full group sequence before joining (Seay, n.d.).
Closed-ended groups are beneficial for individuals seeking treatment for the first time or for those planning to begin treatment together. Reading materials and homework assignments are distributed during sessions (Seay, n.d.).
Best Practices in Bullying Prevention
The Whole School Approach to Bullying Prevention and Intervention
Bullying in schools has become a widespread phenomenon, with students serving as targets, perpetrators, and bystanders. Bullying incidents adversely affect the school environment and can have a serious impact on academic performance. Effective programs typically include:
School-wide components addressing training, monitoring, awareness, and assessment of bullying; class-level components emphasizing school-wide rules and the development of social and emotional skills such as empathy and problem-solving; and intervention components involving both students who bully and students who are bullied (Berlin & Ruscitti, 2011).
Social and Emotional Learning
Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) focuses on the systematic development of a core set of emotional and social skills, enabling children to manage life's challenges and thrive in social, professional, and learning environments (Berlin & Ruscitti, 2011).
Positive School Culture and Climate
In order to prevent bullying in a school environment, diversity must be welcomed and grounded in mutual respect. An anti-bullying policy is effective only when the school's atmosphere is comfortable, caring, trusting, and respectful (Anti-bullying procedures for primary and post-primary schools, 2013).
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