Teacher Talk
How to Keep Kids Off Their Phones While Homeschooling
By: Scott Wilson | Sep 2, 2026
The most reliable way to keep kids off their phones while homeschooling is to agree on a spot where the phone goes during schoolwork, out of reach and out of sight. Set a clear return point, keep the work surface phone-free, and switch off notifications before the session starts.
Teachers have been working on this problem for a long time. Now it's your kitchen table.
Eyes down ...
Power Struggles With Students: 5 Ways to Stay Calm
By: Amy Konen | Jun 28, 2017
Power struggles with students end fastest when you stop competing for the win. Drop your volume, slow your speech, use fewer words, and give the student a way to save face. Pushing harder can contribute to the next standoff starting at a higher level of escalation. We have all been there. ...
To Grudge, or Not to Grudge, That Is the Question
By: Mary McLaughlin | Jun 28, 2017
One approach to letting go of a grudge is to name what happened, separate the incident from your interpretation of it, and avoid repeatedly dwelling on that interpretation. For teachers, that means treating a student's bad day as one moment, not a verdict, and giving yourself the same grace you'd ...
Tracking Bullying Incidents: 20 Ideas to Use Bully Data
By: Jon Konen | Jun 28, 2017
Start tracking bullying incidents by logging every report with the same fields: date, time, location, grade, students involved, incident type, and severity. Review the log monthly for patterns rather than case by case. Those patterns tell you where to add supervision, which students may need additional behavioral supports, and what ...
Provocative Victims and 7+ Practices for Victory
By: Jon Konen | May 25, 2017
"Provocative victim" is a term from older bullying literature for a student who is both experiencing bullying and engaging in provoking or escalating behavior toward peers. Terminology and definitions vary across the research, and the label carries a real risk of sounding like blame. It describes a pattern staff are ...
9 Conflict Resolution Strategies to Teach Students
By: Jon Konen | May 8, 2017
Conflict resolution strategies for students are the scripts a child can use when an ordinary disagreement starts: telling someone to stop, using an I message, taking a break, or walking away. Calming down is often a useful first step when it is safe to do so. Safety concerns and suspected ...
Bystander Roles in Bullying: The Bully Circle Lesson
By: Jon Konen | May 8, 2017
Bystander roles in bullying describe the positions students take when they witness it: assisting, reinforcing, watching passively, or defending. The Bully Circle maps seven roles involved in a bullying situation around the student being bullied. Teaching students to name their own role is what moves them from passive bystander to ...
11 Communication Strategies to Combat Bullying
By: Jon Konen | May 8, 2017
Communication strategies to combat bullying work when they run in both directions between every pair of adults and students in a school, not just top-down from staff to students. The most effective schools build deliberate channels among staff, students, parents, and the community, so a bullying incident gets reported, addressed, ...
5 Reasons Schools Have a Hard Time Stopping Bullying
By: Jon Konen | Mar 3, 2017
Here's why schools have a hard time stopping bullying: many reports turn out, on investigation, to be arguments, rough play, or an overused label rather than the aggressive, repeated, power-imbalanced behavior most bullying frameworks describe. Legal definitions vary by state, and FERPA limits what a school can say publicly, which ...
How to Raise a Defender: 7 Ways to Build an Upstander Against Bullying
By: Jon Konen | Mar 3, 2017
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, ...
10 Ways to Empower Bully Prevention Defenders in Your School
By: Jon Konen | Mar 3, 2017
Bully prevention defenders are students who step in or tell a trusted adult to keep a classmate safe, not to get anyone in trouble. Building that culture starts with explicitly teaching the difference between tattling and reporting, then backing it up with consistent recognition, clear reporting routes, and staff modeling. Back ...