Nicholas Carlisle and No Bully. Nicholas Carlisle is a “recovering attorney” and the founder of No Bully, a nonprofit organization in the Bay Area of San Francisco. Having been the target of bullying himself growing up in England, he has developed a simple and powerful way to solve the problem that’s being implemented now around the globe: create teams of students, working under the tutelage of a trained adult.
The results are compelling: No Bully has a 92% rate of effectiveness in stopping the bully from future incidents. Few, if any, other programs can make this claim.
How can this be? It looks too good to be true. The school takes discipline off the table and the coach runs a series of three short meetings of six to eight students (including the bully and the bully followers) who work together on behalf of a student who has become a target.
Over the course of three meetings the power shifts from the adults to the students themselves, drawing on their natural idealism, their sense of justice and fairness, their natural compassion and sense of empathy to come up with a solution. It is the kids themselves, who are the ones best positioned to solve the problem. Give students a voice and a stake in the wellbeing of fellow students and in their community.
The creation of Solution Teams also reaps other, less direct benefits. The students who participate develop their own leadership skills and hone their skills of empathy and compassion. Moreover, the school benefits, as the Solution Team is a powerful lever for change in a school’s culture. That’s a win-win-win.
Well designed and executed groups—once they become teams—can benefit students on both the receiving and the giving ends.
The results are compelling: No Bully has a 92% rate of effectiveness in stopping the bully from future incidents. Few, if any, other programs can make this claim.
How can this be? It looks too good to be true. The school takes discipline off the table and the coach runs a series of three short meetings of six to eight students (including the bully and the bully followers) who work together on behalf of a student who has become a target.
Over the course of three meetings the power shifts from the adults to the students themselves, drawing on their natural idealism, their sense of justice and fairness, their natural compassion and sense of empathy to come up with a solution. It is the kids themselves, who are the ones best positioned to solve the problem. Give students a voice and a stake in the wellbeing of fellow students and in their community.
The creation of Solution Teams also reaps other, less direct benefits. The students who participate develop their own leadership skills and hone their skills of empathy and compassion. Moreover, the school benefits, as the Solution Team is a powerful lever for change in a school’s culture. That’s a win-win-win.
Well designed and executed groups—once they become teams—can benefit students on both the receiving and the giving ends.