A Curriculum to Strengthen Students Against Cyberbullying

The Facing History School in New York City takes a unique approach to cyberbullying, based in part on its partnership with Facing History and Ourselves, a professional development organization that integrates the concepts of identity, community, responsibility, decision-making and participation into all aspects of its curriculum. By looking at case studies about social injustices, students try to understand the circumstances and decisions surrounding these events and then relate that back to their own experience and communities.

Last fall, I asked students at the school to describe their experiences with social media and bullying and how their thinking has evolved since freshman year — thanks in large part to their school.

“I would hang out with this group of girls and I guess there were other people that didn’t like my friends so then it turned out that they didn’t like me,” said Dayanara Romero, 17, who experienced bullying during her sophomore year. Now a senior, Ms. Romero, said that at the time she was being called names in school and online. “It’s horrible because they would list it on the Internet,” she said, “so everybody thinks that’s you when in reality they don’t know who you are.” Ms. Romero said she learned to trust the social workers in the school. “They would make meetings with me and those people and that would actually help,” she said.

In the history class that I observed, students were discussing human trafficking. “We don’t maybe see human trafficking here but there are behaviors associated with it, said Mark Otto, 33, assistant principal. “There’s ideas of being a perpetrator, control, power, a victim, that we see,” he said, “and so how do we make those connections for kids and help them understand that there are similar behaviors in different instances.” The students apply the lessons of larger social issues to their own lives.

The curriculum also consists of an advisory period where each grade focuses on a different topic. Meeting four times a week over four years with the same group of students and the same adviser “is designed as a way of saying to students there’s a space in the school for you to stop and think about these issues,” said Daniel Braunfeld, 32, program associate for special projects at Facing History and Ourselves.

In the advisory period I observed, students were watching a video about a young girl who lived in the South during the 1960s and witnessed her parents attacking buses. “When we talk about standing up against injustice and all of our curriculum is surrounded by ways that individuals speak out against the wrongs that are happening, it kind of ingrains in the kids and they become these empathetic individuals,” said Jeffrey Galaise, 32, special ed coordinator and a teacher of English and history.

The ultimate goal is to encourage students to be both good students as well as civic participants. “Cyberbullying is an amazing case study because it doesn’t happen inside of the walls of the school,” Mr. Braunfeld said. “So what we are hoping will happen is that the students are being given the tools and the perspective and the lens to look outside of their school community and say this is something that is happening to members of my community that is wrong and I have the tools to be able to address that.”