Unit Six: How To Become a Hero By Acting as a Witness or Ally

Lesson 1: Difference between victim blaming and supporting a target

Often, students think they are supporting a peer who is being bullied, when in reality, they employ victim-blaming responses, which only make a distraught student feel worse.

In this lesson, students will identify at least three empathetic responses to use when a peer specifically reports being mistreated or bullied.

Lesson 2: How to safely help a target in physical danger

Sometimes, students will encounter a situation where a target is being attacked by aggressors. In this critical lesson, students will be able to identify at least three actions that minimize risk to themselves when trying to help a target trapped in a physically dangerous situation.

Lesson 3: Helping a friend build systems of support

In the first two lessons of this unit, students learned how to support targets of bullying and mistreatment. We now shift our focus to teaching students to recognize additional signs of psychological distress in a friend, even if there is no bullying or mistreatment involved. Students learn to help a struggling peer identify a network of people to provide support as the peer works to make positive changes to their thoughts, feelings and behaviors.