Background: Student bullying represents a disruptive challenge that threatens the psychological climate and educational effectiveness of schools. Effective management of this crisis requires an in-depth understanding of the lived experiences and continuous struggles of teachers and school counselors confronting this phenomenon.

Objective: The present study aimed to explain the process of managing school climate in response to student bullying through a grounded theory exploration of teachers’ and counselors’ experiences.

Methods: This study adopted a qualitative approach based on the systematic grounded theory strategy. The study population comprised teachers, school counselors, and educational psychologists with lived experience in confronting school bullying in Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad Province, Iran. Purposeful and theoretical sampling was employed until data saturation was achieved, resulting in 19 in-depth, semi-structured interviews. Data were analyzed through three stages of open, axial, and selective coding.

Results: Systematic data analysis led to the emergence of the core category: The Ongoing Struggle to Curb Bullying and Manage School Climate in the Absence of Organizational and Disciplinary Support.” The paradigm model revealed that causal conditions (ecological inadequacies such as visual blind spots and row-based seating arrangements that impose an extra cognitive load on the attentional systems of both students and teachers) intersect with intervening conditions. This intersection constrains the pedagogical agency of the educational staff. In response, educators deploy a continuum of strategies ranging from constructive interventions to passive avoidance adopted by teachers suffering from cognitive depletion and emotional burnout. The consequence of this cycle is the emergence of moral injury, erosion of professional identity, dominance of counter-educational norms within the hidden curriculum, and the reproduction of psychosocial trauma.

Conclusion: Managing educational climate in the face of bullying is far beyond a simple behavioral intervention; it is an ecological challenge that directly exhausts teachers’ executive functions and psychological capacity. To overcome this crisis, policymakers must move beyond reductionist approaches by redesigning the physical architecture of classrooms to optimize cognitive processing, establishing transparent intervention protocols, and enhancing parental educational literacy. Only through these systemic measures can educators’ professional agency be restored and a safe environment fostered for expanding social-emotional learning.