introduction

In recent years an awareness has developed of the frequency and destructive consequences of harassment, intimidation, students picking on each other – what may all be called bullying – in the schools. These are forms of aggression that make the lives of students painful. They affect classroom climate and make teaching and learning more difficult. The personality, interpersonal relations, and happiness of students who are persistent targets of bullying may be seriously affected. While past research and observation suggest that many students who are bullied suffer quietly, the frustration and anger bullying can generate seem to have had a role in motivating some of the students who have become killers of their fellow students and teachers in school shootings in the United States.

Motivated by the desire to create safe, caring schools, and supported by a grant from the Department of Justice, questionnaires were developed to assess bullying, as well as the broader aspects of students' experience of their lives in the Belchertown schools. Three questionnaires were developed with questions worded to be appropriate for students in grades two and three, four to six, and seven to twelve. Here we summarize our report on middle school students' responses to the questionnaire.

Part one of the questionnaire asked students about behavior directed at them, behavior they performed, and behavior they observed in the course of the past week in school.