TAB uses a Training for Trainers model (T4T). This promotes leadership and supports broad and rapid implementation in which thousands are trained annually. TAB is easily replicable in different cultural and age-diverse settings because trainers are of the culture in which they teach.
During this day-long in-person session, or three-hour sessions over three days in virtual training, those who have participated in the 2.5-hour workshop learn to facilitate it. In pairs, facilitators can then teach the workshop paired with any other trained facilitator.
Particularly talented and experienced TAB trainers are invited to become Instructors, people who work with Quabbin Mediation to train TAB trainers.
The six-unit training builds on the concepts introduced in the 2.5-hour seminar. We define harm doing, the factors inhibiting bystanders from taking action against harm; the factors, including moral courage, which promote active bystandership; and the effects on the target, the harm doer, other bystanders and the community when bystanders do (or do not) interrupt harm doing. Participants practice skills through exercises, role plays and large and small group discussions. Trainees receive a TAB Handbook with unit Information Sheets.
This first-level advanced, four-unit curriculum reviews TAB concepts and analyzes them using current and historical events. For example, one lesson examines the efforts to stop lynching in the U.S., showing the positive evolution of values over 100 years.
This second-level advanced curriculum focuses in depth on targeted populations (for example, people with different abilities, gender identity, transgender, sexual orientation, race, class, size, etc.), discusses why they are targets, and how to intervene.
The basic TAB curriculum is available in Spanish.
This specialized TAB curriculum teaches youth facing significant challenges how to teach TAB to their peers. Staff is also available to teach the specialized Basic curriculum.
The elementary curriculum is for grades 4-6. The curriculum is developmentally appropriate and introduces concepts they will revisit as they move through elementary and secondary school.
Youth TAB trainers, working with their community adult trainer partners or with staff, present to scouting and sports organizations, youth groups in houses of worship, and to summer camp youth and camp counselors.
TAB has been taught at MIT and Mt. Holyoke College, and in many community colleges, to undergraduates, graduate students, professors and administrators. In community colleges, where the students often have job and family responsibilities, and some are the first in their families to attend college, student retention is a concern. Students feel a greater sense of belonging and feel safer after the introduction of TAB. A number of TAB trainers, on graduating high school, continue as adult trainers.
TAB has been implemented as a means of transforming the workplace to a norm in which harm doing is not acceptable. Active bystandership, in response to harmful actions, leads to more positive interactions among people. It creates an improved workplace atmosphere where all employees feel safe. This contributes to workplace productivity.
TAB promotes collaborative team building skills, engenders a sense of competence, strong leadership skills, and a sense of commitment to the organization. The program substantially reduces costs for conflict management, mediation or litigation.
TAB has been taught at the Massachusetts Correctional Institute in Norfolk to 70 members of the Lifers’ Group in that prison. It has also been taught in the minimum security section of the Franklin County (MA) House of Corrections to 60 inmates slated for transition back to the community.