When I was a Middle School Principal, I worked closely with our school counselor. In so many ways, he was my right arm. We touched base nearly every morning and tackled any pressing items that were on deck, problem solved solutions for students, and discussed what we were seeing from each of our lenses as people in our school community. We led student conferences, co-taught team building lessons to kids and facilitated discussions with groups of students on various topics as issues would arise within our school.
There was a time we found out about a crazy you tube video that was circulating that kids were watching at home and repeating. We pulled groups of kids together and talked about the dangers of it. There were other times where we saw a group of girls repeatedly using derogatory words towards each other. We held a girls group session over two recess periods to talk about female empowerment and the strength and weakness in the words we chose. The list of our mini sessions is long but the intent was always the same. Discuss an issue openly and provide a plan for moving forward. We called it triage.
He developed a wonderful peer tutor program using our high school students to teach our middle school students about many facets of character education, including harassment and bullying. I was able to sit in on some of the lessons and have kept the main objectives within my mind and heart since.
Simply put, our middle schoolers were taught there are usually four groups of people in a bullying situation. The bully and the victim are usually the first two groups students can easily pick out. The second group is known as the bystanders. The bystanders are aware of the bullying, watch it, and do nothing to stop it. They do not participate or help the bully but they also do nothing to support the victim. The fourth group of people in a bullying situation are the allies. An ally takes some kind of action to support the victim and/or safely stop the bully. If the situation is unsafe and the bully can not be stopped, we teach allies to get adult help immediately.
His team repeated these lessons throughout the year with different booster lessons for our students. We didn't want students to forget what had been taught and we wanted them to be able to relate the principles to different situations. We wanted the information to stick, to matter, and to change behavior (where needed).
All these days and years later, I've been wondering where the gap sometimes begins between what we teach our kids to what we actually do as adults. If we say we don't tolerate bullying between students, doesn't that inherently mean we won't tolerate it among adults? If we know that our children watch what we post and learn how to treat other human beings by our word selection, doesn't that essentially mean we shouldn't use the internet to cast public, personal criticism on another? If we wouldn't tolerate demeaning emails or secret Facebook groups created and sent between children, why would we be permissive about it for adults?
We teach students what we believe in.
Do our actions match our beliefs?
For many, the answer is already yes!
But for some, the answer hasn't been considered.
And until it is, the gap will remain...despite all of our best lessons.
More about Mr. Castrio (famous school counselor mentioned in this post 😊) and his work with peer tutors can be found on their Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/CORINTHWAVE/ .
There was a time we found out about a crazy you tube video that was circulating that kids were watching at home and repeating. We pulled groups of kids together and talked about the dangers of it. There were other times where we saw a group of girls repeatedly using derogatory words towards each other. We held a girls group session over two recess periods to talk about female empowerment and the strength and weakness in the words we chose. The list of our mini sessions is long but the intent was always the same. Discuss an issue openly and provide a plan for moving forward. We called it triage.
He developed a wonderful peer tutor program using our high school students to teach our middle school students about many facets of character education, including harassment and bullying. I was able to sit in on some of the lessons and have kept the main objectives within my mind and heart since.
Simply put, our middle schoolers were taught there are usually four groups of people in a bullying situation. The bully and the victim are usually the first two groups students can easily pick out. The second group is known as the bystanders. The bystanders are aware of the bullying, watch it, and do nothing to stop it. They do not participate or help the bully but they also do nothing to support the victim. The fourth group of people in a bullying situation are the allies. An ally takes some kind of action to support the victim and/or safely stop the bully. If the situation is unsafe and the bully can not be stopped, we teach allies to get adult help immediately.
His team repeated these lessons throughout the year with different booster lessons for our students. We didn't want students to forget what had been taught and we wanted them to be able to relate the principles to different situations. We wanted the information to stick, to matter, and to change behavior (where needed).
All these days and years later, I've been wondering where the gap sometimes begins between what we teach our kids to what we actually do as adults. If we say we don't tolerate bullying between students, doesn't that inherently mean we won't tolerate it among adults? If we know that our children watch what we post and learn how to treat other human beings by our word selection, doesn't that essentially mean we shouldn't use the internet to cast public, personal criticism on another? If we wouldn't tolerate demeaning emails or secret Facebook groups created and sent between children, why would we be permissive about it for adults?
We teach students what we believe in.
Do our actions match our beliefs?
For many, the answer is already yes!
But for some, the answer hasn't been considered.
And until it is, the gap will remain...despite all of our best lessons.
How to Save a Life - Acoustic Version - The Fray
NOTES: October is Stop Bullying Month! More information about what we can do to support this work can be found at: https://www.stopbullying.gov/
More about Mr. Castrio (famous school counselor mentioned in this post 😊) and his work with peer tutors can be found on their Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/CORINTHWAVE/ .
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