bullying

As a parent of 8th and 9th grade girls and a Counselor in a middle school this kind of behavior can be very difficult to watch... in my work with kids at any grade, I try (initially) to use a mediation approach if the power balance isn't too significant ( if they're in the same grade)with students with the idea that nobody is in trouble, but some things need to change, i.e. people treating each other more decently... often I work with the victim separately as well to help them "stand up for themselves" in their interactions with "bullys" and emotionally not let others "hurt your heart"...while also helping them identify and shift their energies towards those students who don't treat them that way and may be potential friends/allies... easier said than done!... so your approach of sitting the "ring leader" down with the victim was a good start, in my opinion... this "relational aggression" is hard to discipline in a school, as it's hard to discipline someone for being "mean" to someone else... there are some pretty clear and fairly useful definitions about what harassment is, however ( one-sided, uninvited, intention to harm, etc.)so sometimes discipline ( or threat therof) is necessary too... I know this is a long-winded response to a situation you were dealing with more than a month ago, but I hope that it's useful to you...

As a peer mediator advisor and special educator, I am in constant contact with children who are being victimized. We have started programs that help children understand the vocabulary of being an upstander. We have started a club called Acceptance, Awareness and Action which sponsored a Mix-it-Up at Lunch Day and a No-Name Calling Week. Do all of these initiatives work well? No but they are a start. My response to bullying is mediation and support for the victim. I do not believe that punishment of the bully works because it does not change the behavior of the bully. I believe that self-defense classes need to be offered in every middle school and high school as well as yoga and meditation classes to enable students to find their voices, calm their fears which leads to bullying (fear of not being smart enough or rich enough or popular enough or pretty enough.... I believe a determined effort on the part of the entire faculty and administration is necessary to change the culture of bullying in our schools. We can never give up or stop trying to educate children socially and emotionally. The victims need empowerment and the bullies need to learn how to communicate more effectively. We put every bully through peer mediation. Their parents are not permitted to call me or discuss their child with me. The program is cocooned and we have seen a dramatic rise in the number of mediations. Kids are beginning to request the mediations, not just teachers and counselors. One other suggestion I have is to form talk groups. We get groups of kids together on a weekly basis who are not friends and we talk about their social and emotional issues.We do not force their thinking. We offer other perspectives for them to ponder. It helps us keep our hands on the pulse of what kids are thinking and feeling. That's what we are doing. As a final note, we visited the Tolerance Center/Holocaust Museum on Long Island. Our seventh and eighth grade students are going into sixth grade classes to do lessons on Tolerance/Acceptance. They planned their own lessons and I can't wait to see them teach. I am trying to spread the word of acceptance in as many formats as I can.

have a look at the no blame approach to bullying - do a search and it should come up. it is a uk based programme, very easy to implement and i have used it with great success in New Zealand schools. have a read and see what you think.

One of the drawbacks of a goal "to become more socially and emotionally aware people" is that awareness may not always entail resolution of conflict. IMHO teens are often quite socially aware, despite being emotionally unstable, so any approach must not involve talking down to them. Seeing as teens are often under the illusion that they are of the age of knowing everything, forcing a sitdown mediation could be taken as a form of talking down.

Ironically, real adults will request mediation to resolve a conflict. As teens merely think they are adults, your attempts to "move forward" may not be acceptable, simply because they want to be treated like adults. Never mind the fact that we know they are still immature; I'm talking about pretending to try to reach them.

Perhaps the real answer is that you can't move forward, at least in a controllable manner. Hopefully this pair will sort out their rubbish in a non-violent manner. Or perhaps they will have their inevitable catfight and become best friends after the dust settles. Just try not to get caught in the crossfire. Good luck!

What happens when we identify kids as "victims" of bullying? Read "Standing Up to Bullying: Refusing to be a Victim."
http://inspiringstudentmotivation.blogspot.com/2012/08/standing-up-to-bu...

Kati

Most approaches to bullying prevention are what I call outside-in approaches. People try to get those doing the bullying to stop, often with little success. That's something we have to do. We have a professional, moral and ethical obligation to do everything we can to provide a safe environment for each student in which to grow. However, I like to take what I call an inside -out approach by teaching young people "tools" as part of what I call a "Mental and Emotional Tool Kit for Life". I actually teach a grad class for teachers called "Mental and Emotional Self-Defense against bullying" on how to teach young people these "tools" to help them protect themselves (for those times when we can't protect them) from bullying and other forms of abuse. The beauty of this approach though is that in teaching the "tools", you target the underlying causes of all those things that go wrong in and outside of classrooms, now and later in the lives of young people, that being what they think and feel, and then say and do because of that, in response to their life events.

I invite you to go to www.itsjustanevent.com to learn about the "tools"

Because bullying is so ugly, it's often a challenge to deal with kids who bully. Here are some thoughts on how to manage ourselves when we need to interact with students who bully: "Dealing With Students Who Bully: The Essential First Step."
http://inspiringstudentmotivation.blogspot.com/2012/08/dealing-with-stud...

After establishing your role and goal, here are a few ideas about how to effectively deal with kids who bully:

http://inspiringstudentmotivation.blogspot.com/2012/08/dealing-with-stud...

In some sense their "anger and hate" toward the girl they bully is NOT in a "real place." It is more about them than it is about the victim. It is misplaced anger. I did an anti-bullying class at a Boys and Girls club. It was not billed as such, because kids had to voluntarily join or were refered to the class and "encouraged' to join. It was called a "leadership" class. Kids learned how to develop their own leadership qualities (and test them out using musical instruments; poetry; using the politics of getting other people to believe you and respect them etc).. The behavior of the participants inproved and there was a noticable reduction in their provocative behavior of bullying others. Giving them a forum for self exploration in a judgementally neutral and yet compassionate way takes their focus and interest away from others and brings it closer to their own grasp. Group is best because of the feedback loop of that undifferentiated teens ingage in (in both bad and good ways.).

Carrie is absolutely right. We should be helping those on the "doing" end as much as those on the "receiving" end. Kids often have what Rudolph Dreikurs called "mistaken" goals when they misbehave in any way. i.e. Attention, Power, Revenge, and Avoidance of Failure. But the driving force behind behavior intended to satisfy such "mistaken" goals are loneliness or a perception of estrangement for Attention, anger for Power and Revenge, and shame, guilt and anxiety for avoidance of failure. And it's the thoughts they have about themselves, others and their life that give rise to both the emotion and "mistaken goals". The first three could and often do play a role in "bullying". Too often in education we try to stop a behavior we don't like by simply using advice, or consequences without identifying and addressing the real underlying cause of it. Behavior is just the tip of the iceberg. It's also a symptom of attitudes and feelings that need to be addressed. Anger often plays a role in some level with bullying. Anger gives kids (or anyone) a false sense of power, righteousness, permission and protection. It's very attractive to those who feel powerless (in school, at home), those are always being told they do something wrong. Most of all, it's often a way kids use to protect themselves from feeling other things like shame, guilt, depression, anxiety, loneliness. As long as they're angry, they don't feel those other feelings. So once again, anger is a symptom of things that need to be addressed, but too often we just react to the anger, and sometimes even take it personal if it's directed at us. Part of Carrie's point is that it's not personal. At least not for the victim so much as for the one doing it.

It even helps to talk to those being bullied about what they think the mistaken goal is of those doing that to them. If you and they arrive at the answer "Power", which it usually is, you can then ask, "Would you like to learn how to take that power away from them? Would you like me to teach you how to do that? That's where the "tools" I teach come in, in particular teaching them to have an internal locus of control. It's kind of like the adult version of "I'm rubber, you're glue...", "I know you are but what am I?" or "sticks and stones..."

www.itsjustanevent.com

Sometimes you can solve the problem as Carrie did by simply having kids do things that address the real underlying issue, i.e. loneliness, powerlessness, low self-esteem. That's called "putting their behavior where you want their attitude to be". But you can, and often have to start peeling back the layers of the onion until you get to the core. That's where the "tools" I teach kids can be helpful. It works even better if done as prevention, instead of as a way to react to a crisis. The "tool kit" approach "vaccinates" kids against all manner of mental health, health and social problems. It's a "shot in the arm" for those struggling. It's a form of "mental and emotional karate" for those being bullied or struggling with other rough spots. And it gives kids the mental and emotional fitness to function at levels they are capable of, in and outside the classroom, now and later in life.