AISNSW Creating Cohesive Communities Podcast

SNIPPET: Research shows that young people are not likely to engage in anti-bullying programs from adults because adults find it really difficult to understand the complex social underpinnings and norms that young people are experiencing. Really the solution to preventing bullying is in young people.

JULIA: Welcome to the AISNSW Community Cohesion Podcast, developed by the Association of Independent Schools New South Wales.

My name is Julia Gyomber, and today we are joined by special guest Doctor Zach Gregg, founder and CEO of the Stand Up Project, who will share his incredible journey with the Stand Up Project and how peer-to-peer learning for students to respond to discrimination, harassment and bullying within a school context and beyond can effectively reduce such behaviours.

Doctor Zach Greg is a collaborative and impact driven leader committed to putting respect for human rights into practice. He holds a Masters and a PhD in Community development and a Bachelor of Business and over many years has worked in the not-for-profit, government and education sectors. Join us as we focus on Community cohesion and how peer LED interventions are proving an effective way to address prejudice and building a sense of belonging in school communities.

Before we begin, we would like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the lands and airways in which we are meeting and broadcasting today as we share our learning, we also pay respect to elders both past and present, as it is their knowledge and experiences that holds the key to the success of our future generations.

Welcome Zach and thank you so much for joining us today.

ZACH: Thanks, Julia. It's good to be here.

JULIA: Thank you. So, let's just get into it.

Zach, let's go back to the beginning.

How did the stand up project come about? And why was it so important for you to get this project up and running?

ZACH: So, thanks, Julia. I've held a special interest in helping communities to reduce discrimination, harassment, and bullying. And I hold this special interest because of my own experiences as a young person.

So, when I was quite young, I was bullied terribly. So, I went to several different schools. But I remember just the feeling of pure terror that I had going to school.

I felt all alone, and I didn't feel like anyone really understood what I was going through. And I went to my parents. I remember once my mum said to me, “hit them back,” and I did once. I hit them back and they just hit me back harder and I ended up in the hospital from that experience.

And I found the whole experience really isolating. The school actually sent me to a psychologist to try and help me with the bullying experience, and I remember, the psychologist said to me, “I want you to go up to that wall over there and I want you to pretend to bully the wall.” And I just remember thinking that that's absolutely ridiculous. And I felt humiliated and embarrassed. And I did it.

I went up to the wall and pretended to bully the wall. And when I sat back down, the psychologist looked at me and said, “see what happens when you don't respond to bullying. You stop.”

And it was in that moment that I really understood that the adults in my life didn't really understand what bullying was like and the impact that it was having on me as a young person.

I then spent the next 20 years researching and working with community members. As you mentioned, I did a PhD in Community development, but particularly on how you can empower communities to solve their own collective issues.

I've also done a great deal of research on active bystanding as a way to improve community well-being, and I've worked with young people to design collective solutions to the issue of discrimination, harassment and bullying in schools.

JULIA: Amazing how your personal experiences have, and that profound story told amongst so many other things, as you said, your education as well has come to build this amazing project.

So, what are your key messages when introducing the Stand Up Project to school communities that may not have considered an upstander program before?

ZACH: Yeah. So, there's a few things that I try and highlight to schools and the first thing would be the prevalence and impact of bullying.

So, we know from research that one in three students in Australia experienced discrimination and one in four experienced bullying, and those numbers are incredibly high. They actually have increased overtime. But possibly more important than that is the actual impact of bullying.

Traditionally, bullying has been seen as a par for the course. You know, it's just something that young people have to get through to become tough and resilient.

But the Australian Bureau of Statistics just recently released some research that shows as young people experience bullying so that as the prevalence of bullying goes up, their academic scores in Maths and Science goes down. And it's amazing research because it shows the exact trajectory of that academic performance.

So, if a young person is bullied on average once a week, they perform a particular level in science and maths. But if they're bullied two or three times a week, they perform significantly lower than that and it just demonstrates the short- and long-term impacts of bullying that we perhaps haven't understood properly as a society before that.

Another thing I really try and highlight to schools is where the solution to this lies. So, research shows that young people are not likely to engage in anti-bullying programs from adults because adults find it really difficult to understand the complex social underpinnings and norms that young people are experiencing.

Really the solution to preventing bullying is in young people, and that's something that I really try and stress when I talk to these groups is, young people have the power to have collective solutions and to improve community well-being. It lies within them.

The traditional models of teachers and parents teaching young people how to not bully or ways to respond have been shown in research to just simply not work.

The other type of thing I try and highlight with schools is the reason why bullying is so bad for our society. So, we know that the rates of family violence and gender inequality, and discrimination in Australia are increasing as are the attitudes that contribute to these factors. And active bystanding has been proven to work against these injustices. So, equipping young people with the knowledge and skills they need to be active bystanders means they are much more likely to connect with others, perform well academically, and foster a community of harmony and respect.

JULIA: So, can you explain to our audience, just going on that, that peer-led intervention in this space is such an effective approach to strengthening community cohesion, in particular with anti-bullying and anti-racism within school settings. I think you started to touch upon that. Did you want to add anything further?

ZACH: Yeah. So, a lot of the work that I've done through the Stand Up Project is based on two academics who did some research in the late 1960s and their names were John Darley and Bob Latané. They were really the first psychologists to formulate and study the bystander effect.

And essentially, what the bystander effect is, that as groups get larger, people feel a diminished sense of responsibility to act. So, if you're in a room by yourself and you see something that you think is unacceptable, you're very likely to respond to that unacceptable behaviour. But as more and more people join you in that room, you're more likely to think this is not my responsibility. It is the person's next to me or someone else's responsibility to act.

By the same token, the research shows us that it just takes one person, one young person, to be an active bystander for the whole community, to acknowledge that a particular behaviour is unacceptable.

So, there's incredible, incredible power in being an active bystander. And that's something that I really try and stress to young people.

Another really interesting part of the research shows that children or young people don't listen to adults when it comes to anti-bullying behaviour. So, they're much more likely to listen to their peers or their friends because they've got social credit in their mind. They look up to their friends, they want to be their friends. So, a peer-led model is often a much more effective way of reducing discrimination, harassment and bullying in a school.

JULIA: And as you said, the research backs it and I'm sure you've seen that with facilitating this amazing program. Now I know with this particular project you also have something called the 4D's. Would you be able to unpack that a bit? And explain what that's all about.

ZACH: Yeah, so the 4D's are the ways in which that you can be an active bystander and I actually add a fifth D to that, which is Do nothing.

So, the reason why I stress the Do nothing option to young people is we don't want young people to be going out in their school communities thinking that it is their responsibility to respond to every single injustices they see.

Being an active bystander is really about being safe, following social norms and doing it in a way that doesn't break up relationships. So, it's really about responding to behaviours and not people.

So, for example, I'm an active bystander to my mates. And to other people in my life who are important to me. If one of my mates says something inappropriate, I'll usually say to them “dude”. And that's all I need to say. It's an inflection of the word, “dude,” where I'm saying to them, “I do not accept what you've said. I think that's unacceptable, but by the same token, you're still my mate.” So, the 4D's really focus on that.

So, with Direct, that's about doing something directly. So that would be like with my example of saying “dude,” where you actually step in and you say something directly.

Distract is a really funny one. Distract is when you distract from a situation which you think is inappropriate, so you might, drop your school bag, drop your keys, spill a drink, but do it in such a way where it is clear to the perpetrator and the victim that you don't accept what is happening there. And it's really about supporting the victim and addressing the behaviour.

Delay is when you delay an action, so you might not feel like it's an appropriate time to actually step in and do something, but you might do something a little bit later where the situation might have calmed down or something.

Delegate is when you might delegate to someone else. That may be a teacher or a parent, but often it will be one of your peer groups. So, saying to a mate, “Hey, can you have a have a chat to so and so and just let them know, I didn't think that what they did was very cool. The really key things to these four Ds is that you're supporting the victim and addressing the behaviour because we know from research conducted with victims of bullying that often victims don't find the instant of bullying itself as the upsetting part.

What's upsetting to them is that no one has stepped in to support them. And what happens when no one steps in and supports them is they think there's something wrong with them. They internalise that bullying and think that, well, if no one's doing anything about this, maybe what that bully said is true. Maybe I deserve this. So active bystanding is really a way to support them in safe ways that maintain relationships.

JULIA: Amazing, and that was just so beautifully articulated and really how effective yet, so beautifully simple as well.

And that internalising dialogue as well, that really does make sense doesn't it in terms of the reactions and interactions that happen within school groups and it does make sense. Those four Ds really do speak to that and how effective are those strategies.

ZACH: And it's something that students can really grab a hold of. And it's easier to understand. You can remember it. You can promote it through the school community and yeah, it seems really effective.

JULIA: And I like it that the first D you did mention was Dude. But that is not one of those.

ZACH: So, we've got fives yeah, we've got five Ds, possibly 6 now.

Yes. Yeah, consider that.

JULIA: Just going back, can you walk through how the program looks in action?

ZACH: Yeah, well, one of the things we haven't actually spoken about yet, Julia is one of the unique parts of the Stand Up Project is, the students themselves design class plans, which they then teach to younger students.

So, when I go into a school, I say to them “I'm not an expert. I've got some experience and some theoretical knowledge in how to be an active bystander. My role is to support you in developing an active bystander program that is entirely yours. You're therefore completely responsible for the success of the program or its failure.”

And students, when I do that kind of look at me and go, you want us to do this?

And I'm like, yeah, this is you. This is a problem you're experiencing. You know, the language that helps. You can solve this problem.

So, the way in which we do that is we get 30 to 40 older students who are seen by the school community as leaders. So, we usually get school captains, you know, footy, footy Captains, house captains and other students who are particularly interested in social justice and I give them some background knowledge and my personal experience about active bystanding.

And then those students take that information, and they go away, and they design their class plans for how they plan to teach what they know to younger people. And it's entirely theirs. Then those older students teach what they have developed to the younger cohorts, and they usually do that in homeroom.

And once that's done, we actually do an evaluation session at the very end with those older students. So, we say to them “what worked really well with those sessions with the younger students? Were those younger students engaged? Were they interested in what you were saying?”

One of the things that older students do is they also put together a survey which they give to the younger students after those sessions. So, we evaluate that survey and they can actually see in data how effective their training has been. Which is an incredibly powerful tool because they can then put that in their resumes in their applications for university and they can say “hey look, I developed an anti-bullying program by myself with my friends that reduced bullying, discrimination, harassment in my school by 86%.”

It's an incredible power, incredibly powerful opportunity for them and to create collective action and you see it, you see it when you're working with these young people, how excited they are to take on this responsibility.

As yeah, yeah.

And as part of that process as well, we also collect studies from the school because each school has different experiences of what this might look like at their school. So, we collect case studies, which the older students workshop on how they would be an active bystander. And they use those case studies when training those younger students as well.

The great thing about SUP as well, is it also aligns with the respectful relationships curriculum and really, taking that community response.

SUP also offers training to all the teachers of that school and all the parents. And the way we do that, those sessions is really interesting because we actually asked some of those students for the older group to come along and assist me in teaching teachers and parents about active bystanding so it changes the power dynamic. It really puts those students as the expert.

JULIA: I love the reframing and the genuine opportunities for agency for the students. That's incredible and how profound an impact that actually is.

You know, if a School wishes to do this SUP, the Stand Up Project as you were saying, what's the commitment and how much you know what and the participation and involvement? You've mentioned the student cohort. You mentioned that you do sessions with the families and the teachers.

Is this over a certain amount of time? Would you be able to just sort of speak to that a bit.

ZACH: So, we tailor the approach depending on the school's needs because it also needs to work around their curriculum and their timeframes that work for them. So, I usually start by having a talk to the teachers involved and workshop what's going to work for them and what they think their particular needs are.

SUP assists with all the delivery, except for the student-to-student sessions. So, a requirement of the schools is to set some time aside, usually in home room where those older students come into the home room and teach the younger students. But SUP facilitates the other sessions usually after school or during lunch time.

JULIA: Wonderful. So it is very easy to actually facilitate if the school takes it up.

ZACH: It is, yeah.

JULIA: Can I just say in terms of the curriculum you mentioned the respectful relationships, so that is specific to Victoria. So, the next question is, is the Stand Up Project available across Australia?

ZACH: It is, yeah. So, we operate through several schools throughout Australia.

We can also do an online module as well. And really tailor the approach to each individual school because some acknowledge that you know, particularly the workload of teachers and principals is absolutely through the roof. So, we work with the school to make that process as seamless as possible.

And the great thing about it is what I found is, once the students get started on it, it's theirs and they take it on. And they, the students, are actually the ones that that push the project forward and teachers can often kind of take a hands-off approach because that's a very model that we've developed is that it's the students, it's not ours and they take it where they want to take it.

JULIA: Sounds incredible and very sustainable. So that's yeah, absolutely. So just on that note, for the schools that have participated, what's the feedback been?

ZACH: It's been fantastic. So, I guess on a personal perspective, it's beautiful to see how enthusiastic the students get. We run two sessions with the older students to begin with, to train them up and work on their class plans.

Every single time, the second session has got twice as many students as the first session because the which poses some problems because we then need to retrain those students and miss the first one.

But those students that attend the first one, tell all their friends and go oh, I've done this a great this great thing. We're going to give this. We're being given this opportunity by the school to do this great. Program and then all these extra students come along. So that's for me. The part that I really love to see.

More empirically, we conduct a survey with all our schools, and we found that 90% of students say they are more likely to be an active bystander at school because of the training that the students deliver. 70% of the students say that they would prefer to be trained by their peers than their teachers, which I just think is a phenomenal statistic. And 75% of our students say the training has been important or extremely important to reducing discrimination, harassment and bullying in their schools. So, the feedback we've received has been really positive and it's just really lovely to see the students get so enthusiastic about it.

JULIA: Amazing. Incredible data that really supports how effective that peer-to-peer-led intervention is in this space. Amazing.

Before we wrap things up. If a school was interested to know more about the program offerings, what can they do?

So, they can check out our website, so that's www.thestandupproject.com or they can e-mail me, which is zachgrieg@thestandupproject.com and that's ZACHGREIG. So, they can get in contact with us.

Another thing I actually forgot to mention, Julia, is we have a staff member working for the Stand up Project called Doctor Kerry Tucker. And Doctor Tucker has appeared on Australian Story and he's quite well known throughout Australia because she was actually in jail for seven years due to, she committed fraud. And she completed her Ph.D. while in jail and has become a real advocate for fraud prevention and active bystanding.

She actually comes, and if the school wishes each school has the option to invite Doctor Tucker along to speak to the students or not. But in those cases where she has come and spoken to students, she talks to them about what it was like to be an active bystander in jail. And how she would have benefited from active bystanding to stop her perpetration. Creation where she, when she, was committing the fraud and the students, their eyes go wide. They're like, wow, you've been in jail, and they ask all these in-depth questions and yeah, it's such an amazing opportunity for them. And Doctor Tucker is such a great inspiration. That we're really glad to have her on board.

JULIA: But once again, that lived experience and you know, and it's covering just so many diverse lived experiences, yet the underlying principles remain the same. So that's just incredible.

Thank you so much. It's just been amazing to hear and for you to share your wonderful program and everything that's happened with it and continues to and it's just amazing how proactive you have been in terms of building cohesive communities within classrooms within schools and beyond. And it's just incredible.

We will also, by the way, provide further information through our Creating Communities Mighty network, especially for our listeners, listeners who wish to continue the conversation with Zach and to reach out.

Thank you so much for listening. We hope that this has supported your Community Cohesion journey and just to let you know that the AIS NSW Community Cohesion team are available to support NSW Independent Schools strength in their community, cohesion, respect and sense of belonging in school communities.

We also provide an access and range of professional learning and support services and it's at no cost. You can go to our web page and website for further information. We know that we will definitely be referring your work, Zach, will be echoed definitely in some of our conversations that we'll have with the independent schools. It's just been an absolute. Honour to have you today and we. Look forward to...

ZACH: Thanks Julia.

JULIA: ...hearing about the Stand Up Project as it continues to grow and evolve. So thank you so much.

ZACH: Thanks, Julia. It was lovely to join you. I had fun.

JULIA: Great. All the best. Thanks.

Remember you can access AIS NSW creating cohesive podcast episodes via the community Cohesion Projects web page or Mighty Network.