Bully/Victim: A Shifting Paradigm

Bully/Victim: A Shifting Paradigm Kate Grant, MEd Kristin Ogard, LPC Jonathan Weedman, LPC

Bullying in the Media
Media reports on the extreme cases
Many of these cases involve mental health issues
We are talking about bullying tonight not criminal acts like assault
Criminal acts or extreme bullying requires serious intervention and discipline

What We Want for Our Kids
We want children to be strong, resilient and responsible citizens who can solve their own problems and who are prepared for life
Adults need to teach children how to solve their own problems
Adults should interview for resilience instead of pain

Bullying
Bullying is an intentional misuse of dominant behavior with an imbalance of power and/or strength that takes many forms including verbal, physical, emotional, and electronic (Grant, Ogard, and Weedman)

The Conceptual Framework
Children Need to be Resilient
The Psychology of Bullying
Understanding the Paradigm of How We Respond

The Psychology of the Bully/Victim
Dominant behavior is part of mother nature and is inherent in all primates
The bully is often a victim in disguise
Everyone has engaged in some level of bullying in their life time

Motivation Behind Behavior
What Bullies Want:
Power
Respect
Popularity
The fun of driving others crazy
What Victims Want:
Power
Respect
Popularity
To stop being driven crazy
Revenge

Anti-bullying Approaches that Work…
Teach children to solve their own problems
Discourage children to blame each other but to understand all parties have equal responsibility for solving the problem
Understand that punishment alone doesn’t solve the issue
Recognize that adults cannot and should not supervise every interaction between students but rather adults should help children learn the skills of good decision making

Resiliency is Key
There are no “good” and “bad” people just “desirable” and “undesirable” behavior
Kids need tools and skills to deal with dominant behavior
Resiliency is created from overcoming difficult experiences
Resiliency can be taught and learned
Learning to problem solve has life long benefits

How We Respond
Adults need to teach skills to all children
Adults need the skills to intervene on behalf of both victim and bully
Shift from blame to responsibility and taking positive actions for both children
Shift from fear to empowerment and skill building
Includes everyone
Can be used at home, too

What We Do at Catlin Gabel
Beginning and Lower School
Weekly class lessons in Kindergarten and 1 st grade regarding conflict resolution, problem solving and being a good community member
Lessons in second grade regarding resiliency, conflict resolution, and decision making
Anti-bullying role plays in third, fourth, and fifth grades
Provide coaching for individual students and parents

What We Do at Catlin Gabel
Middle School
6th and 7 th graders will have one week of anti-bullying skills training
Upper School
Will train Peer Helpers in anti-bullying skills
Will teach anti-bullying skills in 9 th grade health class

Anti-Bullying Skills
Teach victims to respond in a way that is genuine instead of defensive
Teach victims how to not give others the power to get them mad
Teach role plays for reactions (insults, rumors, exclusion, physical, cyberbullying)
Teach resiliency skills
Teach positive self-talk and reality checking
Empower kids to emotionally self-regulate
Coach kids when and how to involve adults to help them

How We Teach the Concept
The adult invites the student to try and bully them. The student’s job is to keep bullying and the adult’s job is to try and get them to stop
The adult gets upset and angry, usually the student starts laughing
The adult then asks the student to try it again with the same parameters
This time, the adult diffuses the situation and doesn’t get angry and soon the student stops
The debrief: the adult asks the student which was more fun and the student always says the first. The adult then talks about how this is exactly how it works with bullies. They keep going because its fun to get you (victim) mad.

Cyberbullying
Not a big distinction between cyberbullying and other forms of bullying
Skills used to combat cyberbullying are similar to other skills used for other forms of bullying
A good resource is The Center for Safe and Responsible Internet Use created by Nancy Willard ( http://www.cyberbully.org/ )

In Conclusion
Our goal is for children to learn skills to address these issues by teaching the necessary skills to students to handle their own problems.
It’s important that the entire community be involved in this process (parents, teachers, kids, across divisions)
We welcome information and conversation

Scenarios
Scenario One: Exclusion (Lower School Age)
Scenario Two: Rumors (Middle School Age)
Scenario Three: Cyberbullying (Upper School Age)

Q/A
Beginning and Lower School go to Narnia
Middle School go to Broxway
Upper School go to Middle School Library

Bully/Victim: A Shifting Paradigm

by Catlin Gabel School on Apr 01, 2011

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