Mean Girls

We have a case of Mean Girl Syndrome at my elementary school. Some may say that it's just girls being girls, but the events going on have definitely crossed the fine line between girl drama and emotional bullying. Every class has 'em. Girls who seem to delight and thrive on making other girls feel miserable and inadequate. Girls making fun of the way you dress, the way you look, the way you act, or anything else they can beat you down with. I've come to the conclusion that maybe these girls wouldn't have such an effect if they didn't have an entourage mimicking their every move or not standing up to what they know is wrong. Unfortunately, I have more than a few of these girls in my class. Whether they're leaders or followers, both make healthy classroom relationships among the students next to impossible. What can we do? There are only so many classroom talks or discussions with the counselor that we can have. As teachers we can try to protect the girls being targeted, but we can only protect them at school. The bullying continues outside of school and we can't do anything about that except tell the girls to stay away from each other and alert parents, but that seems to never work. The mission seems impossible, but as teachers we will continue to fight back.