During Anti-Bullying week students completed an activity to make sure we all have an understanding of "bullying," so we can all work collectively to discourage and avoid it. After checking their understanding of the Anti-Bullying Alliance's definition of bullying, students looked at 12 scenarios to decide if each mean incident should be categorised as bullying or not. This created some thoughtful and heartfelt discussion with one student disagreeing with the ABA definition and suggesting a scenario meeting 2/3 criteria should be classified as bullying, and another student wondering if it is really possible for students to bully a teacher. Some excellent discussion on abuse of power ensued and it was great to see students speaking passionately about social and moral issues.
In our Votes For Schools discussion on Friday we answered the question, "Is being a by-stander bullying?" Students were 50/50 on this issue, with some arguing that being a bystander is sometimes necessary to keep oneself safe, others saying being a bystander is bullying as it contributes to the problem by increasing the imbalance of power, and others saying that combating bullying is everyone's responsibility.
Here is the Anti-Bullying Alliance's definition of bullying.
Last year Simmons House Classroom was accredited by the Anti-Bullying Alliance as a GOLD school for our work to ensure bullying doesn't happen here.