"Lesson 2: Learn physical self-defense and mental toughness. You will need it."
If I may add to this line...I would suggest taking martial arts to learn how to fight. NOT bodybuilding. While the two are not completely disimiliar, I have a friend who is a 3rd degree black belt in Shotokan who took on two Navy Seals once and won (both floored), and you'd never know it to look at him. Start martial arts early, and you will not HAVE to fight when you're older.
I advocate this for boys because the bullying they face is so much more often physical in nature. It isn't the answer for girls who generally face a far different kind of bullying.
My Mom-in-law and her siblings came for an alcoholic, abusive, poverty-stricken home environment. She and her sibs were also subjected to vicious teasing at school about their drunken father and poor status. Just picture being abused both at home and at school; their lives must have been pure hell. Every one of the siblings (six) quit school after 8th grade because they couldn't take it anymore. Most did not do well in later life due to the abuse and lack of a good education.
I came from a much more affluent home environment but faced bullying in school for years due to being a reader and a better student than most of the other kids, also just for being "different". I never felt normal all the way through school. It took years to get over it. I feel I missed out on many opportunties in my early life because of a fear of drawing attention to myself, a direct result of the abuse.
This is one thing the schools are doing right IF they really do hang the responsibility right on the bullys, themselves, and do not blindly insist on the "moral equivalence" approach of "mediating" between bully and victim.