©2008 M.A.R.C

 

 

 

 

 

What is this program?

Changing the social climate in a school is most effective if students themselves take a leadership role.  To do that, schools must choose a small leadership group and train them to conceptualize bullying and abuse and to generate their own, student-conceived and student-led anti-bullying and anti-cyberbullying programs.

Because adolescents learn best from high-status peers, MARC can facilitate this process by sending out trained Bridgewater State College graduate and undergraduate students to teach a small leadership group how to conceptualize challenges at the school and how to build their own programs.

What does the school need to do?

This is not a program that MARC can run for your school.  We can help you choose your student group, we can train your student's supervisor along with the students, but on an ongoing basis the school must commit to the student group.  MARC will not train a group of students who lack a supervisor or coordinator. 

To maximize the success of this program, we recommend that you choose the group's supervisor with care and that you schedule regular meetings for the group. 

Reinforcing students who are positive non-violent role models is a critical factor in the success of any anti-bullying program.  To maximize that reinforcement, we recommend that schools send their small groups of students to the BSC campus for a special Training Day that can include a campus tour and lunch in the Student Cafe. 

Although we do offer training dates where we come to your school, we have noticed that groups that are trained on the BSC campus are more excited by, and invested in, the whole program.  We are happy to host schools on campus and will provide space, etc. 

How many students can you train?  How large should the leadership group be?

Ideally, we prefer a 5-to-1 ratio of students to Facilitators.  However, a Facilitator can train up to 7 students.  The difficulty is that because we use BSC students as Facilitators, it's hard to anticipate exactly how many college students we will have available for a particular school training.  For this reason, we recommend that schools develop two lists of students: a "Definite" list of 10 students and a second "Probable" list of another 10 to 15 students.   We always try to provide enough Facilitators to train both your lists, and are usually able to do that.  We will let you know well ahead of the training.

What are the strengths and weaknesses of this approach?

Clearly this approach entails more of a commitment from the school, but they are likely to find that this approach also has more of an impact on their school's climate.  Sending MARC Student Associates to train your students is likely to be successful and this program has been rated very highly in our outcomes research.  The MARC Student Associates are deliberately less professional which renders them better able to connect with teenagers. 

 

**CLICK HERE TO SEE A VIDEO DEMONSTRATION OF OUR STUDENT LEADERSHIP TRAINING PROCEDURE**     ** NOTE: Many schools opt for an assembly first, followed by a leadership training for a select group of students by our Student Facilitators.