Bystander Roles in Bullying: The Bully Circle Lesson
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 active defender.
Back to the main Bully Prevention Guide.
What is the most impactful bully prevention lesson you have ever taught? What made it effective? What evidence do you have that proves your opinion?
If there were one lesson I'd recommend be taught to all students, it's a Bully Circle lesson. Most students who witness bullying aren't bullying anyone and aren't being bullied. They're bystanders, and what they choose to do can influence how the incident unfolds. That's the case for teaching this every year, at every grade level.
Before you read further, you have to agree to three underlying assumptions:
- Great instruction from effective teachers can reduce bullying incidents in the school.
- Empathy, kindness, and tolerance should be taught every day.
- Problem solving by students and staff members should always focus on "going to solution."
What makes an instructional lesson effective? A strong lesson has to:
- carry strong content that connects to the learner's world outside the lesson,
- engage the learner and build a real emotional connection,
- encourage discussion and mind shifts,
- and be useful in the future.
PU #109 - Teacher Strategy: Teach with Strong Content
Plenty of sites have modified the idea of a Bully Circle, but the most used diagram comes from the Olweus Bullying Prevention Program, developed by Dr. Dan Olweus. The visual helps students, parents, and teachers understand the different roles everyone plays when a bullying incident occurs. The program is now run by the Center for Schools and Communities, which took over as provider in July 2025.
The Bully Circle puts the student being bullied in the middle. On one side sits the defender, the student willing to step in and stop the behavior. Directly opposite is the student doing the bullying. Everyone between those two poles holds some level of connection to the incident, and those in-between positions are the bystander roles. Here are all seven:
- Person Bullying - a student who bullies
- Followers - students who take part in the bullying, but don't usually start it
- Supporters - students who aren't taking part, but openly support it
- Passive Supporters - students who support it, but don't openly show it
- Disengaged Onlookers - students who watch, but do not act
- Possible Defenders - students who dislike the bullying, but do not act
- Defenders - students who actively try to stop the bullying
Your students may arrive with different vocabulary for the same territory. Research on bullying, and the federal guidance at StopBullying.gov, tends to use a four-role shorthand for the bystanders: assist, reinforce, outsider, and defend. The two frameworks overlap heavily but organize the participant roles differently, so treat the table below as a rough guide rather than a strict translation. The Bully Circle draws finer distinctions in a few places, splitting open from private support and separating students who are close to acting from those who aren't:
| Bully Circle Role | Closest Research Term | What It Looks Like in Your Classroom |
|---|---|---|
| Person Bullying | Child who bullies | Starts and leads the behavior |
| Followers | Child who assists | Joins in once it has started, doesn't initiate |
| Supporters | Child who reinforces | Laughs, cheers, forms the audience |
| Passive Supporters | Child who reinforces | Enjoys it privately, shows nothing outwardly |
| Disengaged Onlookers | Outsider | Watches, stays neutral, walks away |
| Possible Defenders | No direct equivalent | Believes it's wrong but stays silent |
| Defenders | Child who defends | Steps in on the spot or reports to an adult |
One caution worth passing to students directly. StopBullying.gov warns against labeling children as "bullies" or "victims," because it suggests the behavior can't change and hides the fact that the same student plays different roles in different situations. Teach the roles as positions a student occupies in one moment, not as identities. A disengaged onlooker on Tuesday can be a defender on Wednesday, and that's exactly the shift you're teaching for.
That's the content foundation. The Bully Circle is a structure you can modify all year, and it stays relevant at every grade. What changes is the social context you pour into it. In the primary grades, you keep the situations simple. By high school, you're discussing complex social dynamics and the consequences that land on each person in the circle. Teachers and students can work through how to stop future incidents, and how a group of students can shift a school's culture and climate.
Here is a diagram showing the roles of each person in the bully circle:
PU #110 - Teacher Strategy: Engage the Learners
Connecting with students can be difficult, but choosing a social context relevant to their lives can be a strong engagement strategy. As students get older, the content you pour into the lesson structure changes. Their ability to understand roles within the bully circle gets more complex right along with it.
Pulling situations from your own school, as long as anonymity is maintained, is one of the strongest ways to find engaging content. Students working through social situations that actually happened in their building is a powerful way to combat the specific bullying behavior in that learning environment.
Teachers often choose social situations that aren't relevant or aren't age-appropriate, and the power of the lesson is lost. You need situations that fit the age group, and you need to pair the ones that address what has already happened with ones that prepare students for what they'll encounter later. The goal is giving students tools before they need them.
That two-part lesson planning, fixing bullying behavior that already occurred plus building skills for future incidents, also drives engagement. Making the situations real is what makes this lesson land.
PU #111 - Teacher Strategy: Encourage Discussion
Gone are the days when a teacher's main mode of instruction was standing in front of a class lecturing students on what they should and shouldn't be doing. Discussion and peer explanation can deepen students' understanding and require them to articulate their reasoning. The best way to get there is discussion-based instruction. It pushes students to talk through the social implications of each position on the bully circle, and to work out solutions.
Students need to discuss the roles, actions, and language that fit each social context you introduce. At the primary level, the ideas stay basic. At middle and high school, students learn strategies they can actually use to solve the problem and shift the culture of the school. They need time to work through these situations with adults and with each other.
Empowering students to solve their own problems is one of our goals as teachers and adults. We aren't always around when bullying behavior occurs. Building a learning community full of defenders is the real target. Combine adult support with student ownership and a school staff can measurably reduce bullying behavior.
PU #112 - Teacher Strategy: How the Content Is Used in the Future
What makes the Bully Circle lesson so powerful is that students can use it immediately and teachers can build on it for years. Many bully prevention lessons hand students skills for situations they might face. This one does that and can be revisited and adapted across grade levels. You connect to prior learning and work out how the social contexts of the bully circle play out in situations students will meet next year.
Here is a simple lesson plan for the bully circle. It can be modified for any grade level:
Title: 5th Grade Bully Circle Lesson
Objective: The students will be able to identify the roles of each person on the bully circle and be able to solve the problem.
Rationale: Students need this information in order to be proactive and to stop bully behavior before it starts.
Materials: Diagram of the Bully Circle (big enough for students to see), current bullying behavior stories from the school
Steps in Lesson:
- Introduce Bully Circle Diagram. Find out what students already know about bullying.
- Define and discuss roles of each person on the bully circle. Make sure students are able to discuss with one another the definition and roles. Teacher will need to address any misconceptions.
- Introduce a social story or a recent bully behavior incident that occurred on campus.
- Have students discuss and define the roles of each person in the social contexts of the bully circle. Teacher will need to address any misconceptions discussed.
- Have students discuss how they will solve the problem. Discuss what words and actions that defenders can use in this specific situation. Teacher will need to discuss and brainstorm ideas with students. Teacher will need to make sure the solutions students come up with follow school rules and protocols for combatting bully behavior.
- Teacher will discuss the future implications if the bully behavior is not stopped and reported, as well as ending with what positive outcomes will occur when the bully behavior is stopped.
- Students again discuss what they can do in the future when bully behavior occurs.
- Students will then do a 5-minute quick write about how they would solve the given bully situation. Teacher can set up a writing rubric for the response. Students follow the rubric requirements.
Assessment:
Teacher, with student support, can create a writing rubric for a 5-minute quick write. Teacher can determine the effectiveness of the bully prevention lesson, as well as the next teaching points.
Here is a sample 5-point rubric:
5 = 30-50 Words in Length (1pt), an opinion with at least 2 details that supports (2pts), sentence content fully answers the question (1pt), neatness and grammar (1pt).
4 = 30-50 Words in Length (1pt), an opinion with one detail that supports (1pt), sentence content fully answers the question (1pt), neatness and grammar (1pt).
3 = 20-30 Words in Length (0.5pts), an opinion with one detail that supports (1pt), sentence content partially answers the question (0.5pt), neatness and grammar (1pt).
2 = 20-30 Words in Length (0.5pts), an opinion with no supporting details (0.5pts), sentence content does not connect to the question, neatness and grammar (1pt).
1 = 5-20 words in Length (0.5pts), no opinion or details, sentence does not connect to question, hard to read and grammar is an issue (0.5pts).
Why Bystanders Stay Silent
Ask a class whether bullying is wrong, and every hand goes up. Ask how many stepped in the last time they saw it, and the room goes quiet. That gap is the whole problem, and students won't close it until you name why it exists.
StopBullying.gov identifies the reasons plainly. Students fear retaliation. They fear becoming the next target. They worry that getting involved carries social costs they can't afford. None of that makes a student callous. It makes them a child doing a risk calculation with incomplete information, which is precisely the calculation a teacher can change.
When you teach the circle, spend real time on the two positions that sit closest to defending: the disengaged onlooker and the possible defender. Those students already know the behavior is wrong. What they lack is a script and the confidence that someone will back them. That's a teachable gap, and it's where this lesson earns its keep.
From Bystander to Upstander: What Students Can Actually Do
The word your students need is upstander. StopBullying.gov defines an upstander as someone who sees what's happening and intervenes, interrupts, or speaks up. It's a useful piece of vocabulary because it gives students a name for the thing you're asking them to become, which is easier to aim at than "don't be a bystander."
The federal guidance lists concrete moves, and these translate directly into the discussion portion of your lesson:
- Question the behavior. Changing the subject or simply asking what's going on can break the moment.
- Use humor. Saying something funny redirects the conversation without escalating it.
- Go in as a group. Several students intervening together shows the behavior doesn't have an audience.
- Walk with the target. When it is safe to do so, walking with or staying near the targeted student can provide support.
- Check in privately afterward. Telling someone you saw it and didn't agree with it matters more than students expect.
That last one is worth emphasizing, because it's the move available to every student regardless of confidence level. StopBullying.gov notes that peer support for students who are bullied is associated with better outcomes. A student who can't bring themselves to intervene in the hallway can still find that person at lunch.
Say plainly that not every situation calls for stepping in directly. Students should choose a response that is safe for the situation and get help from a trusted adult when direct intervention could escalate the incident. Reporting to an adult is a legitimate upstander response, not the fallback for students who lost their nerve, and students need to hear you say that.
Give students these five options during the lesson, have them rehearse the words out loud, and make sure every solution they generate fits your school's reporting rules and protocols. A defender who doesn't know the reporting system is a defender who stalls out.
Make sure to visit our other subject-specific lesson plans.
MORE BULLYING PREVENTION GUIDE RELATED READINGS:
- 3 Types of Bullying in School + 1 Immense Social Challenge
- 5 Reasons Why Schools Have a Difficult Time Stopping Bully Behaviors
- 5 Reasons Why We Need to Define Bully Behavior and Stop Generalizing Events as "Bullying"
- 6+ Steps to Addressing Bullying When It Occurs
- 9 Strategies We Can Teach Students to Problem Solve
- 7 Ways How to Raise a Defender of Bully Prevention
- Provocative Victims and 7+ Practices for Victory
- One School Wide Philosophy: High-Trusting Relationships
- 13 Ideas to Combat Bullying at the Community Level
- 6 of the Most Hideous Cyber Bullying Tactics Used By Students
- 11 Communication Strategies to Combat Bullying
- 20 Ideas To Successfully Use Bully Data
- 5 Reasons Why Strong Instruction Affects Bully Prevention
- #1 Instructional Lesson for All Students on Bully Prevention (Currently here)
- Power of Buddy Classrooms: 19 Ideas
- 8 Ways to Teach Empathy
- 10 Ways to Empower Defenders
- 9 Reasons Culture Trumps Strategy
- One School-Wide Strategy: Kindness Campaign
Frequently Asked Questions
What are the bystander roles in bullying?
Bystanders occupy the positions between the student bullying and the student being bullied. The Bully Circle names four: followers who join in, supporters who openly encourage it, passive supporters who approve quietly, and disengaged onlookers who watch without acting. Research shorthand collapses these into assisting, reinforcing, and outsider roles.
What's the difference between a bystander and an upstander?
A bystander witnesses bullying without acting. An upstander sees the same incident and intervenes, interrupts, or speaks up. The distinction matters in the classroom because it gives students a specific role to move toward rather than a behavior to avoid.
At what grade should I teach the Bully Circle?
All of them. The structure stays the same from primary through high school. What changes is the complexity of the social situations you use inside it. Primary students work with straightforward scenarios, while high school students can handle layered social dynamics and long-term consequences.
Why don't students step in when they see bullying?
Some students who stay silent may already believe the behavior is wrong but fear retaliation, fear becoming the next target, or worry about the social cost of getting involved. What they're missing is a script and the confidence that an adult or a peer will back them up, both of which a lesson can supply.
How do I assess whether this lesson worked?
A five-minute quick write scored against a simple rubric gives you usable data on the same day. Ask students to explain how they'd solve a given bullying situation and name the role each person played. Their answers tell you what to reteach.
- Bystanders can shift the outcome - Most students witnessing bullying are neither bullying nor being bullied, and what they choose to do can influence how the incident unfolds.
- Seven roles, one circle - The Bully Circle maps positions from follower through disengaged onlooker to defender, and students move between them situation by situation.
- Roles are positions, not identities - StopBullying.gov advises against labeling children as bullies or victims, since the same student occupies different roles at different times.
- Silence has specific causes - Fear of retaliation, fear of becoming a target, and social cost keep students quiet, and each one is addressable through instruction.
- Upstanders need scripts - Question the behavior, use humor, intervene as a group, stay near the targeted student when it's safe, or check in privately afterward, and involve an adult when stepping in could escalate things.
Teaching students to recognize their own role in a bullying incident pulls together classroom management, child development, and social-emotional learning all at once. The education programs listed on this page include coursework in classroom climate and behavior support, and several run fully online for teachers already working a full schedule.
As a 5th grade teacher, in 2010 Jon won the Presidential Award for Elementary Math and Science Teaching (PAEMST). As a principal, his school won the 2012 Blue Ribbon Award. In 2018, he won the National Distinguished Principal Award (NDP). In 2019 he won the National No Kid Hungry Breakfast Hero Award.
Jon is the author of three guides published on teacher.org: An Educator's Guide to Combat Bullying & Bully Prevention; Teacher Evaluation: A Transition Guide to Exemplary Performance; and You are the Wild Card: Infusing Fun Back into Curriculum. He has authored a children's picture book that was released January 2019 titled Benjamin’s Visit to Principal Reads Office…again! (available at www.archwaypublishing.com)
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