Bullying Prevention Through (Free) Songs, Posters, Videos, Dance, and More

Just in time to help you plan for National Bullying Prevention Month (October) or classroom or group activities anytime of the year – some free resources from willUstand, Pacer, the We Do Listen Foundation, and more!

I’ve written before about willUstand, a wonderful bullying prevention initiative started by a middle school student in my district that features Stand, a crowd-sourced music video, and downloadable ($1) song. Now willUstand has added eleven different free, downloadable bullying prevention posters for elementary, middle, and high school settings. (They will be adding more posters in the future.) Here are a few examples:

We use the song and video in our third, fourth, and fifth grades – the kids absolutely LOVE them – and will be displaying the posters and adding lessons that use them to inspire students to create their own Stand posters.

You can follow willUstand on Facebook and Twitter at @willUstand, and they’d love for you to share any posters your students create with them at either of those places.

The chorus of Stand is hard to forget. You can find the full lyrics here.

I will stand beside you
Will you stand with me, dig your feet into
The earth, cuz she’s worth
Somebody to catch her
Let’s join together and
Stand

Here’s the video:

National Bullying Prevention month is sponsored by Pacer’s National Bullying Prevention Center. National Unity Day, when people across the country unite to send a message of support to students who have been bullied, is scheduled for Wednesday, October 9, but since I don’t work on Wednesdays, we’ll be moving the date for our school. We will encourage everyone to wear orange (and will have options for kids who don’t have any orange clothing or who forget.)

Check here for lots of ideas about how your school can participate in Unity Day, and to download posters (in English and Spanish) and an informational flyer. You can also follow Pacer on Facebook. Here’s the elementary poster, but there’s one for older kids too.

I am especially excited about the Unity Dance, which is choreographed to another great bullying prevention song, You Can’t Take That Away From Me. Here’s a snippet of the lyrics.

I’m not just a pretty face

I’ve got something more to say

It doesn’t matter what the mirror sees

How I look does not define

Who I am it’s what’s inside

I’ll be anything I want to be

You can’t take that away from me

I’m not perfect but I wouldn’t wanna change

Cuz perfect is so boring anyway

A great bullying prevention song to use with younger children is Howard B. Wigglebottom’s Be Brave, Be Bold, which goes along with the book Howard B. Wigglebottom Learns About Bullies, which is available in hardcopy book and online. The link will also lead you to the book, posters, and activities. Check out Brave, Bold First Graders to see how we use this book in our first grade bullying unit.

My fourth grade bullying prevention unit integrates art, technology, video production, and reading (including non-fiction – yes, you can address Common Core standards through your school counseling program!) You can check it out at Goodbye Bully Machine, Hello Integrated Learning!. Here’s an example of the collages inspired by the non-fiction book, Goodbye Bully Machine: