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The halls of middle school can be full of bullies.

D.J. Wright knows – because he was one.

"I would hit people, I would push people, I would call people names,” said the South Junior High student. “Then it started happening to me and I realized I would make someone feel horrible. It's just not right."

Jenna Villanueva says she’s a former “Mean Girl.”

"Once you get to junior high school you think you're crazy cool cause you just made someone fall or cry – or you want to fight them and you think you're all big and bad,” she said.

On Friday, the two students joined dozens of others from South Junior High at an anti-bullying leadership training at Boise State. They talked about the why and the how of creating an anti-bullying culture.

“What we want out of this is that people know that this is wrong. Instead of a teacher saying, 'What are you doing? Stop that,' [bullies would] have the whole class look at you like, what are you doing?" she said.

Students learned how to be "active bystanders."

"Instead of people standing in a circle, like, oh, what's about to happen? People will come in and say ‘That's not right, you shouldn't do that,” Wright said. “And then the person will stand down saying, ‘Oh, I can't do this against people that I like; people that are cool."

Some of the students have already done skits at local elementary schools to teach some of the concepts. They hope to share their message with more Treasure Valley schools this year.