I thought of an article by Ross & Ross (1984), who work with children who are bald or overweight as a result of leukemia.
Call attention to the bully's limitations in vocabulary.
"You know, Jeff? It's about time you broadened your vocabulary. The word fatso wears kinda thin after awhile." The overweight student could bring out a thesaurus and suggest synonyms such as corpulent or adipose.
Call an audience
"Ladies and gentlemen, I have an announcement. Larry will now demonstrate what a dirty mouth he has."
Larry, who is not prepared to give a public performance, is now caught off guard.
Arrange an appointment
"I got some time at two-thirty. If you're not busy at that time, let's have a serious discussion on my weight problem."
Ross & Ross found that some of the leukemia victims never had to use any of these responses. Apparently, they appeared too confident, now that they could carry these responses in their back pocket!
Other members of the mailing list have offered humane solutions, such as counselling with the bullies and calling conferences with the bullies' parents. I hope that those solutions work, but these responses might come in handy in case they don't. The teacher could teach these responses to the child, and if that doesn't work, the teacher could call the bullies to the head of the class and use these responses herself.
I hope it doesn't get that far, because I hate to see anyone bullied - even a bully.
Reference
Ross, D. M. & Ross, S. A. 1984. Teaching the child with leukemia to cope with teasing. Issues in Comprehensive Pediatric Nursing 7: 59-66.
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