How to Raise a Defender: 7 Ways to Build an Upstander Against Bullying

Posted
3/3/2017

Jon Konen
District Superintendent

child in a red cape and lightning-bolt shirt standing with hands on hips

Back to the main Bully Prevention Guide.

One important defense against bullying is helping children learn to act as upstanders rather than passive bystanders, while also giving them safe ways to involve adults and protect themselves and others. Parents and educators can support that by modeling giving, service, responsibility, real-world reflection, kindness, respect for differences, and empathy.

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1. Teaching Giving

Giving teaches children to notice other people's needs and respond in concrete ways, whether through time, money, materials, or attention.

At home, kids notice what a family actually does. Modeling generosity in visible, age-appropriate ways, such as donating, volunteering, sharing resources, or talking openly about why the family supports certain causes, is what lets kids absorb the priority without being told directly.

At school, educators can organize food or clothing drives, or take a class out to shovel snow or rake leaves for a neighbor. Acknowledging specific acts of generosity can help make giving visible, but teachers should avoid embarrassing students or creating pressure around family resources.

2. Teaching Service Work

Service work is giving time specifically, and it teaches a kid that not all worthwhile work comes with a paycheck. Service work can help students experience contribution without expecting a personal reward every time.

At home, service work might mean a shift at a soup kitchen or time at an animal shelter. Matching the cause to something the kid already cares about makes it stick.

At school, service work often shows up as a school-wide cause: selling bracelets for a student dealing with an illness, a coordinated shoe donation drive, or a "popcorn Friday" where proceeds go to a specific cause. Even when a student-led project doesn't fully succeed, the kid still learns to plan, organize, and promote something bigger than themselves.

3. Teaching Responsibility

Responsibility is hard to make visible, which is exactly why it matters here. A kid who's never had to be responsible for anything can grow up assuming someone else will handle the world around them.

An allowance is one of the clearest ways to teach it: some jobs are just part of being in the family, and others earn money. A family pet works the same way. Giving a kid ownership of a specific task, feeding the dog, walking it, and cleaning up after it, teaches responsibility toward something other than themselves.

At school, homework, class jobs, and looking out for other students all build the same muscle. A school culture that clearly teaches "we help keep each other safe" supports upstander behavior, especially when students also know when and how to get adult help.

4. Teaching From Real-World Examples

News stories, a parent's or teacher's own experience, or a scene from a movie all do something a lecture can't: they show a kid how people actually treated each other in a real situation, and let the kid think through how they'd react in the same one.

When a story about a bullying incident makes the news, the coverage rarely shows what the school did next. What changed? What got put in place? Those unanswered questions are worth raising directly with a kid: how would you want your own school to answer them?

Real-world examples can help students connect abstract values to situations they may recognize, especially when adults guide the discussion and avoid sensationalizing harm. Processing those examples with an adult can turn a story into a guided exercise in perspective-taking, problem-solving, and safe intervention.

adult hand holding a child's hand, close up

5. Teaching Kindness

Kindness is another concept that has to be made concrete. Kids replicate what they can actually see, so the goal is to make small acts of kindness visible and repeatable.

At home, that's holding a door, letting someone merge in traffic, or letting another shopper go first in line, done in front of a kid rather than described to them afterward.

At school, a PBIS-style recognition system can highlight specific acts of kindness, inclusion, and responsibility, giving kindness the same visibility that misbehavior usually gets. Recognition like this carries real weight with students. This works best as one classroom-climate strategy, not as a stand-alone bullying-prevention program.

mother and young child petting a fluffy cat together outdoors

6. Teaching Respect for Differences

Respect for differences is abstract enough that it needs a working definition before a kid can apply it. Learning for Justice, formerly known as Teaching Tolerance, provides free K-12 resources on inclusion, justice, identity, diversity, and action, and frames the idea as actively acknowledging and valuing people whose backgrounds, identities, or experiences differ from our own.

Children often learn respect for differences first from how the adults around them talk about people whose backgrounds, identities, or experiences differ from their own, well before any classroom lesson reinforces it.

Those early conversations at home get reinforced from kindergarten through graduation. Continuing to name, respect, and discuss differences in age-appropriate ways helps students move from abstract tolerance to genuine inclusion.

7. Teaching Empathy

Empathy is central to upstander behavior because it helps students recognize harm, imagine another person's experience, and choose a supportive response. Sympathy means feeling concern for someone; empathy means trying to understand or feel with that person. In bullying prevention, empathy should be paired with safe action, such as checking on the targeted student, seeking adult help, or refusing to join in. A current Learning for Justice resource on this distinction puts it this way: an ally works with and listens to the people they're supporting, while someone acting from sympathy alone can end up centering their own goals instead of the other person's voice.

At home, empathy gets built by asking a kid to consider more than one side of a situation. A classic example: someone cuts you off in traffic. A reactive interpretation assumes the worst. A perspective-taking response considers that the other driver might be dealing with an urgent situation. Walking a kid through both reactions, side by side, makes the shift concrete instead of abstract.

At school, empathy is built by asking students to consider what a character or classmate may be experiencing, what they might need, and what a safe, supportive response could look like, then asking what that character and the kid actually have in common. That's a harder, more specific exercise than "be nice," and such practice can help students move from passive observation to safer, more supportive upstander behavior.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is an "upstander," and how is that different from a bystander?

A bystander witnesses bullying in person or online. An upstander takes a safe, supportive action, such as interrupting the behavior, refusing to join in, supporting the targeted student, or getting help from an adult. Teaching a kid to be an upstander is the practical version of teaching them to be a "defender."

At what age should I start teaching these seven strategies?

Many of these habits can begin in preschool through concrete behaviors such as sharing, helping, taking turns, and naming feelings. More complex perspective-taking, the kind of respect for differences and empathy required, develops gradually and varies by child. However, the groundwork for all seven starts much earlier than most parents expect.

How is empathy different from sympathy when it comes to bullying?

Sympathy feels bad for someone being bullied. Empathy puts a kid in that person's position and moves them toward acting alongside them, not just feeling for them. Empathy practice may support upstander behavior, but intervention also depends on confidence, peer norms, adult support, safety, and knowing what to do.

What can a teacher do inside a single classroom to support upstander behavior?

Model the behavior directly: acknowledge students who give, who take responsibility, or who show kindness, out loud and specifically, rather than only correcting misbehavior. A classroom PBIS system built around recognition works the same way on a bigger scale.

Does this actually reduce bullying, or is it just character education?

These strategies support character development and school climate, but they should be paired with clear reporting systems, adult supervision, schoolwide policies, and evidence-based bullying-prevention practices. They're best framed as protective habits, giving, service, responsibility, real-world reflection, kindness, respect for differences, empathy, not as a complete bullying-prevention curriculum by themselves.

Bullying is common enough to plan for. About 19% of students ages 12-18 reported being bullied during school in 2021-22 (NCES), which is why building upstander skills early matters alongside responding after an incident occurs.
Home and school both carry the work. Students spend many hours both inside and outside school, so consistent adult modeling across both settings matters.
Empathy should be paired with action. Feeling concern for someone is valuable, but students also need safe, concrete steps for supporting someone who is being bullied.
Make it visible, not abstract. Giving, responsibility, kindness, and respect for differences all stick better when a kid sees them modeled specifically, not just described.
Being an upstander involves learnable skills. That includes noticing harm, refusing to join in, supporting the target, and getting adult help when needed.

Educators shape much of this work simply by modeling it consistently throughout the school day. If you're weighing whether to become one of the teachers doing that work, it's worth confirming that any program you're considering is state-approved for the license and grade level you want.

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