A safe school has a number of characteristics:

1. It protects and supports students.

2. It fights violence and bullying firmly and openly.

3. The staff strictly avoids any violent or humiliating behavior.

4. It creates an atmosphere of law and order.

5. It conveys a sense of belonging and involvement rather than alienation and hostility.

6. It is able to enlist the support of parents, community functionaries, and the vast majority of its students.

Our central assumption is that in order to create a safe school we must first of all strengthen the teachers’ ability to set the rules of behavior in the classroom, in the hallways, in the yard, and in the entrance halls. That assumption is based on a simple fact: If teachers cannot set the rules of conduct, those rules will be made by the bullies. The bullies will decide who will be hit, who will be ostracized, who will be humiliated, and who will be exploited. The bullies will decide whether the atmosphere in the schoolyard and entrance is dictated by fist fights, gang wars, and activities such as smoking, drug use, drinking, and emotional and sexual harassment of fellow students. When teachers lose their authority, many students, including those who would not have done so under different circumstances, join the bullies or choose to remain quiet. Therefore, teachers’ weakness contributes to the corruption of additional students beyond the initial circle of troublemakers and increases the vulnerability of all the students. The question that will concern us in the following chapters is how to build teachers’ authority so that it stands as an effective barrier against these pernicious developments, but do so in an acceptable, moral, and engaging way. In other words, how do you create a new authority that draws its power not from threats, severe punishments, unquestioning obedience, distance, and fear, but from presence, self-control, and decided caring?