Helping students be ‘happier and less worried’: A conversation with Elizabeth Englander

Bullying has been a well-recognized problem for schoolchildren for many years, but the attitudes and potential solutions to bullying have evolved. Once it was believed that schools and adults should not intervene in bullying among children, but now we know that educators can and should create a safe climate for all their students.

Attitudes about students’ mental health have changed, too, and educators have become increasingly aware they can play a role in improving their students’ mental health. School closures, family upheaval, and social isolation during the pandemic had a negative effect on many students, and the need to address students’ mental health needs has become a more urgent concern.

For perspective on these trends and changes, Phi Delta Kappan spoke with Elizabeth Englander. She is the founder and executive director of the Massachusetts Aggression Reduction Center at Bridgewater State University. The center provides resources and training to more than 400 schools every year. Englander, a professor of psychology, is nationally recognized for her research in bullying and cyberbullying, childhood causes of aggression and abuse, and children’s use of technology.

She is the author of nine books, including You Got A Phone!, the Insanely Awesome series for children, Bullying and Cyberbullying: A Guide for Educators, and 25 Myths About Bullying and Cyberbullying. She has also written a variety of research-based curricula and educational handouts for communities and professionals. Englander uses her research to develop tools and skills for teachers, students, and parents to help them deal with the issues that come from bullying behavior.

PHI DELTA KAPPAN: In one of your bios, you say that you have spent more than 25 years “doing research and thinking about ways to help kids be happier, less worried, and make more friends as they grow up.” I was really struck by those goals. How can schools be part of that effort to help kids be happier and less worried?

ELIZABETH ENGLANDER: The most important thing that schools can do is to figure out where their niche is in this quest. Teachers and educators are not psychologists or therapists, and they can’t diagnose problems. They have a lot of kids to look after, so they can’t always pick up on individual things. But there are things they can do to make the climate in the school more positive and more conducive for kids to feel better, to feel safer, to make friends, and to develop social skills. Schools can help families, too. It’s important for everybody to recognize their roles and their strengths, because otherwise it can feel overwhelming. Educators can feel like they’re being expected to do everything, on top of teaching their subject. It’s important for everybody to recognize their part in raising kids and develop skills that are appropriate to their role.

It’s important for everybody to recognize their part in raising kids and develop skills that are appropriate to their role.

KAPPAN: Tell us about your background and research.

ENGLANDER: I’ve been a professor of psychology since 1993. My research has been on children’s aggression, which often has to do with mental health: how kids are feeling and what they’re thinking. Around 2006 and 2007, the focus began to shift more toward technology, which has to do with how kids interact. It has to do with learning social skills and friendship skills, and it has to do with mental health. I started looking at the impact of technology.

When the pandemic hit, it was clear that the paramount crisis we were seeing was not behavior so much as it was mental health among children. All the research on all the continents found the same thing. Kids were struggling to adapt and cope. This was a difficult situation for them as well as for their parents and their schools. During the pandemic, we began to pivot more toward mental health. It was always part of my research focus, but it became more central during the pandemic because that was where the real crisis was happening. We’ve been studying that, as well as behavioral changes and how kids are using technology and how they can use it in a healthy way.

KAPPAN: How has your research changed over the years? Is there more awareness now of mental health issues in children?

ENGLANDER: My research has changed enormously. I was in graduate school in the mid-to-late 1980s when there was a crime wave in the U.S., and a lot of research was focused on teenagers. We were not talking about bullying. We were not talking about girls. We were not talking about technology. All of that shifted in the 21st century. Now we focus on both boys and girls. We are focused on children’s relationships with each other, and the health of those relationships is a main indicator of how healthy their development is. To that end, we’re now looking at traumatic events like the pandemic or things like technology use. There’s certainly more of a focus on mental health than there used to be. The pandemic really pushed that front and center. That was one of the silver linings of the pandemic. It made kids’ mental health much more of an issue, but at the same time, it forced everybody to take it a lot more seriously.

All stakeholders now are a lot more conscious of mental health issues and kids. I spend a lot of time speaking to parent groups and PTOs, and many parents come to hear me because they’re really thinking about how they can tell if their child is having a mental health crisis. How do they know if it’s just a phase? How do they know if it’s something real? What do you do in those situations? There’s a lot more awareness of mental health.

KAPPAN: How did the issue of cyberbullying change during and after the pandemic?

ENGLANDER: Well, it’s changed in ways that you might not think. Initially during the pandemic, we didn’t see any big increase in cyberbullying. Everyone expected cyberbullying to go through the roof, but it didn’t. There has been some indication since then that it may have gone up, but that increase might have been temporary, focusing more around the 2021-22 school year. What’s interesting is that a little more than half of the kids we talk to say that people are trying to be nicer online since the pandemic. Kids are really making an effort. That was kind of surprising. I don’t think we were anticipating it. Those indications that kids are trying to be nicer have kind of stuck since the pandemic. So maybe what we’ll see is that kids are using this traumatic national and international global situation to say, “Hey, we have enough problems. Let’s not add more.”

Having said that, plenty of kids still experience social cruelty online, and that’s a complex issue. Sometimes it’s a matter of people not realizing how things will come across. I may take a photo of you, and I think it’s funny. I’m not trying to bully you. I show it to lots of people because I think it’s hilarious, and you’re really humiliated. That kind of thing sometimes happens. Sometimes kids do go after each other, and it’s easier to do it online. You don’t have to do it to somebody’s face. It’s very convenient. If you have the impulse to do something, you can just pull out your phone and do it. You don’t have to think about it, contemplate it, or discuss it with your friends. For sure, there are still serious problems with cyberbullying. But I really do see signs that kids are beginning to think about healthier ways to live with cellphones. And that’s really encouraging.

KAPPAN: Do have any examples?

ENGLANDER: I was in a restaurant, and I saw a group of kids put their cellphones in the center of the table so they wouldn’t use them. It was a table full of teenagers. And I was in downtown Boston with a few students, and we saw a toddler in a carriage looking at a phone. One of the boys said to me, “That baby shouldn’t be looking at a phone. Babies should be looking at the world and looking at all the people and all the things there are to see. That’s not good for a baby to be looking at a phone.” I was so pleased. I don’t think that’s something a teenager would have said to me 10 or 15 years ago. When we ask kids, “If you’re upset with somebody, is it a good idea to text a million people?” They all said no, that’s not a good idea. There is a learning curve here, and it’s steep, but I do see indications that people are beginning to learn how to live with smartphones. I still think there’s a long way to go, but I’m not in despair. We’ve learned to live with lots of types of technology, and I think kids will learn to do this too.

KAPPAN: If their child is being cyberbullied, parents will sometimes try to protect them by taking away their device, which children see as a negative.

ENGLANDER: We tell kids, if something happens that bothers you and upsets you or it makes you feel worried or anxious, it’s OK to take a break and get your thoughts together. We want kids to learn that they have ways to make themselves feel better. If somebody is being mean to you, it’s OK to put your device down and maybe talk with your dad and help him cook dinner or go hug the dog or get on your bike and ride around the block a few times and see if that calms you down. You have tools to help yourself feel better. We ideally want a situation where kids know that they have these tools. We want to see kids exercising that type of self-control, rather than parents saying, “This is toxic, and I don’t want you using your device anymore.” That can cause worse problems. Kids will say, “If I tell my parents I’m being bullied, they will take my device away, so I’m not going to tell them anything anymore.”

KAPPAN: Cyberbullying is just one type of bullying. What is going on with the issue of overall bullying in schools?

ENGLANDER: Bullying is a lot more psychological than it used to be. It used to be both psychological and physical. Today, it’s almost all psychological. That makes it a little bit trickier to deal with. When bullying is physical, you know how to intervene. You see it happening right in front of you. But when it’s psychological, you must learn how to recognize the behaviors that kids use to bully and how to respond to them in a school setting.

When bullying is physical, you know how to intervene. You see it happening right in front of you. But when it’s psychological, you must learn how to recognize the behaviors that kids use to bully and how to respond to them in a school setting.

That’s a big focus of what we do when we train educators. We say, “Don’t worry so much about looking for bullying per se, look for the behaviors that kids use to bully. Focus on responding to those behaviors.” We discuss the research that shows that in schools where adults respond to those behaviors, kids report less bullying. They report the school is a much more positive place. They report higher rates of resiliency and agency.

When you teach educators to look for bullying and stop it when it happens, you’re assuming that it’s an obvious thing. You hear someone in the hallway call somebody a name. You don’t really know what’s going on. You don’t know if that’s bullying; you don’t know if it’s teasing. You don’t know if they’re in a fight. You don’t know if it’s the thousandth time it’s happened, and this kid has been a target for years. You don’t know if it’s the first time it’s ever happened. It could even be a joke, and you really don’t know. Kids will be mean to each other now and then. That’s going to happen. But there’s a big difference between a school where kids are mean to each other now and then, and they know the adults don’t tolerate those behaviors, versus one where they feel like, as long as they’re doing it psychologically, they can bully with total impunity in front of adults, and it makes no difference.

KAPPAN: What are the things you advise teachers to look for?

ENGLANDER: The primary way that kids bully each other is through gateway behaviors, which are acts of contempt. They’re either something you say verbally or something you do to somebody. You raise your hand in class and express your opinion, and I roll my eyes and make a noise to show you and everybody else that I think you’re an idiot. It can be ignoring somebody when they talk. It can be talking about somebody right in front of them, so they know they’re being gossiped about. It can be excluding people.

The thing about gateway behaviors is that they don’t mean somebody is being bullied. These behaviors are used in all kinds of situations between kids. They sometimes do it just as a joke or for attention. It doesn’t mean it’s bullying. As an adult, you don’t know the backstory. You don’t want to sit there and say, “Well, gee, is that bullying? Maybe it’s just a fight.” If you debate with yourself over these behaviors, which educators see a thousand times a day, you’re not going to have time to do anything. We train educators to respond to gateway behaviors. The idea is to make it clear to kids that it’s not OK to do that. You’re not allowed to gossip about people in front of them, and you’re not allowed to make fun of them or call them names or laugh at them or mock them. Don’t worry so much about looking for bullying. Look for gateway behaviors, which are inappropriate social behaviors kids should not be using. Make sure that kids know that.

KAPPAN: What should teachers do when they see gateway behaviors?

ENGLANDER: You don’t focus on the target. You don’t say, “I don’t think you should roll your eyes when Jennifer talks, because it hurts her feelings.” You say, “That’s a really inappropriate behavior, and it bothers me, so stop doing it.” That’s really all you have to do. Our research is clear that doing that does help. It does seem to make a difference.

This is an encouraging finding because it’s not a big thing to do. You don’t have to figure out if that kid is being bullied, which is an impossible task. It’s important to make concepts and behaviors easy for people to do or they won’t do them by and large. Also, you can train kids to help each other, to focus on a kid who somebody’s being mean to. You don’t worry about confronting aggressive people, which is really hard. Instead, help somebody who needs help.

KAPPAN: One focus on bullying prevention in the past was to encourage the student bystanders who witnessed the bullying to step in and confront the bully, which was not an easy thing to do.

ENGLANDER: Bullying is one of those issues where mass media got ahead of the research. There were lots of stories about bystander interventions before a lot of the research had been done. People come up with ideas, but if you don’t test those ideas and see if they’re helpful, then it can be problematic. The Youth Voice Project tested the idea of whether encouraging kids to confront aggressive peers was a good strategy. They found that about 75% of the time, it either makes things worse for the target, or it does nothing. So 75% is a pretty big failure rate.

There are more reliable things to do. If you want kids to be more assertive, teach them to help a target. They can say to a target, “Don’t pay any attention to him.” Anything you do to help a target is going to make them feel better, and it’s easier to do. I don’t like the idea of teaching children that they should confront aggressive people. Most adults cannot confront aggressive, dangerous people. Some kids will feel like failures because they can’t do it, and really, most people can’t. I don’t like setting people up for failure. I prefer to find strategies that people feel like they can do and that are reliably helpful.

KAPPAN: How can teachers create a classroom climate where bullying is less likely?

ENGLANDER: You want to make sure that kids understand that you expect people to be civil and respectful with each other. That includes how they behave. The kid may say, “Hey, I didn’t do any name-calling. I just rolled my eyes.” Imagine that you went into a meeting with your colleagues, and you sat there snorting and rolling your eyes. There’s no reason that we should let kids do this.

Individually, these are very minor things. It’s tempting to say, “I’m just going to let that one slide.” And it’s totally understandable for educators and parents to feel that you can’t fight every battle. The problem is that once kids realize that they can act contemptuously toward each other and no one will stop them, then they can do it a lot. Once they start doing it a lot, then the school is going to begin feeling like a different place. It’s going to begin feeling like a less friendly place where you have to avoid the landmines and be careful and watch your back. Then all kinds of problems can happen. The climate really can change.

KAPPAN: How does bullying affect students’ mental health?

ENGLANDER: Issues like bullying and cyberbullying or social cruelty or problems making friends — these are detrimental to kids’ mental health. When kids are being bullied, you see increases in problems like anxiety and depression. They may have problems focusing at school. They may have problems making friends. They may become more withdrawn at home. They may be more socially isolated. They may have issues with eating or sleeping. They’re not enjoying things that they’ve always enjoyed. Changes like that are indications that something is going on.

Issues like bullying and cyberbullying or social cruelty or problems making friends — these are detrimental to kids’ mental health.

KAPPAN: How did the pandemic affect students’ mental health?

ENGLANDER: There were increases in depression and anxiety. Social isolation is particularly damaging for children. They really need to be with their peers. Even in schools that remained open, we saw some increases in depression and anxiety, probably because a lot of the unstructured ways that kids interact were gone. For example, there were schools that remained open, but the kids didn’t go on the playground, they didn’t go to the lunchroom, and they didn’t have after-school activities. It’s during those unstructured activities where a lot of the real work is done socially in terms of development. That’s where kids push the envelope and learn new social skills. They interact with each other in a way that is maybe partly academic, partly structured, and partly social and unstructured.

There were more problems among kids whose school either went to a hybrid schedule or shut down. Some kids did better than others. Kids who were introverts told us that they felt OK about going to school online and maybe going in to school a few days a week to see their friends. Staying home with their family was much more comfortable. So, it wasn’t one-size-fits-all. But it was a very formative event for most children. And I suspect we’re going to see the mental health repercussions of the pandemic for many years to come.

KAPPAN: What do you think the repercussions are now?

ENGLANDER: We’re seeing more acting out and inappropriate behaviors. We’re seeing increases in anxiety and depression. We’re seeing kids who are struggling a little bit to socialize, whereas before, they might not have. Some kids who were OK, but didn’t have strong social skills, might be doing a little bit worse now. There’s a bigger slice of kids that we have to pay attention to.

KAPPAN: Some teachers were reporting developmentally inappropriate behavior because the students were out of school for so long.

ENGLANDER: We saw a lot of that at the end of 2021 and early 2022. We saw kids who had forgotten how to go to school and the things they were supposed to do. Teachers said to me, “Oh, they come in and they throw their backpacks and their jackets on the floor as though this was their living room, and just plopped down in the beanbag chair and started looking at their phone. No, no, when you get into school, you hang your stuff on your hook and you put your homework in the box, and then you sit at your desk.” Kids had forgotten how to behave in these situations. But I think it’s better now.

KAPPAN: I’ve read that there’s an increase in school avoidance, where students are refusing to go to school. Is that something that you’ve seen as well?

ENGLANDER: I really haven’t seen wide-scale research looking at it, but there have been some indications that school avoidance is increasing. School avoidance is related to mental health. It’s a situation that happens when a kid’s mental health deteriorates to the point where they can’t really handle the stress of dealing with peer relationships and the academic pressures of being in school. These kinds of problems are what I mean when I say we’re going to have issues continue to crop up for quite a while.

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This article appears in the November 2023 issue of Kappan, Vol. 105, No. 3, p. 30-35.