Our annual peer aggression survey is in and the results can be found here. Overall, our numbers are better than last year. We are certainly focusing more on building community and looking at the social-emotional well being of all our students. If you have any specific questions about the results, please feel free to leave a comment or email me, and I will get back to you.
December 5th, 2010 · 1 Comment
Take a few minutes to read this article from today’s NY Times. All of us need to better understand the online world in order to help our students be safe.
It is difficult enough to support one’s child through a siege of schoolyard bullying. But the lawlessness of the Internet, its potential for casual, breathtaking cruelty, and its capacity to cloak a bully’s identity all present slippery new challenges to this transitional generation of analog parents.
Desperate to protect their children, parents are floundering even as they scramble to catch up with the technological sophistication of the next generation.
Tags: 21st Century Learning · bullying
November 10th, 2010 · 1 Comment
Bullying remains a hot topic in the news with incidents being reported daily. Its important for everyone to realize that this is more than a school issue. We can develop plans for dealing with bullying, but in the end we also need help from parents and the community.
Stan Davis, a bully prevention expert from Maine, gives some valuable guidance to parents:
How can I talk with my child if he or she bullies someone else?
Help your child tell you exactly what he or she did, without excuses or blaming others. Remember that even if the other student involved did something, your child made a choice to do what he did. Encourage her to
talk about how that behavior affected the other person. Help him find the goal he was trying to reach through hurting the other person- Did he want attention? Power? Fun? To be left alone? And help her find other ways to reach that goal without hurting others. If your child has been punished at school, it will probably not be necessary to punish again at home (unless the behavior was severe). Encourage your child to behave better next time.
How can I support my child if he or she is bullied at school?
Avoid blaming your child for what others have done to him or her. Think twice before giving advice- your child may have already tried the strategies you are going to suggest. Get as much information as you can. Talk
with your child’s teacher, principal, or counselor and ask them to help your child be safe. Their
intervention may include consequences for the student who bullies, increased supervision, and
helping your child make more friends if he or she is isolated. Ask your child what she has already tried to resolve the problem. Praise her for all the things she has tried. Give him permission to stop doing the things that haven’t worked to stop the bullying. Encourage him to keep telling you and other adults. Help him to think about what has worked- or what might work. If your child is isolated, help her make connections through activities, hobbies, or clubs. Help your child to heal through art, hobbies, positive relationships at school and away from school, and through helping your child see the cruel behavior as a choice made by those who bullied him or her, rather than as something he or she caused.
Although it is very hard to accept for a parent, there are students who make bad choices and bully others. Below is an excerpt I found today from an article in the Richmond, VA newspaper.
Children who are bullies are often quick to blame others and cannot accept responsibility for their own actions. They do not show empathy or compassion for others and often are immature socially. Oddly enough, they are often bullied by someone else. Sometimes bullies come from families where there are older siblings who bully them or the parents have a bullying style for managing behavior, making the child feel it is him that is unacceptable instead of his behavior.
Children who bully others may not be aware that they are being a bully. They may be socially unaware or are mimicking behaviors they see adults around them do. So, the first step is to make them aware that their behavior will not be tolerated and find out where they learned how to be a bully
via What if my child is a bully?.
Tags: bullying · safety · wellness
September 29th, 2009 · 1 Comment
Ms Coviello, our librarian, has done a terrific followup to the summer reading. Students are responding to the reading with blog comments (see Lane Library Bookworm Blog). We have over 400 comments so far.
Currently, we are surveying the 4th and 5th graders to gauge what type of bullying problem we might have here at Lane. I will release the data once it is complete.
When students see bullying, they tend not to report it. Surveys indicate that they usually believe nothing would be done if they did tell about what they saw. Bear in mind that about 85 percent of bullying happens in front of others, usually peers. The event is institutionally invisible, but there are typically witnesses. These peers intervene only about 10 percent to 20 percent of the time, but when they do, they can stop bullying. Even when the child who steps in is considered weak in the group’s hierarchy of power, the bullying stops within 10 seconds in more than half the instances of intervention by peers. The extensive body of research on bullying has led to a new appreciation of the power of bystanders to enable or disable bullying.
via Bullies can be stopped, but it takes a village. – By Alan E. Kazdin and Carlo Rotella – Slate Magazine.