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BULLYING HURTS AND KEEPS ON HURTING
Newsletter - July 08
Bully Beware's free newsletter keeps you up with the latest and hottest news about bullying. Every issue of this free newsletter is jam-packed with great information about bullying, news of our services and special offers for our merchandise. This is a totally spam-free service, as is our entire site, and your e-mail address will be used for nothing but our newsletter. Please send us an e-mail if you would like to submit any stories or experiences to the newsletter or if you have any suggestions.
Surveys, Results and Lesson Ideas
No matter where in the world you live, these months of June, July and August provide us with inspiration and opportunity!! In the Northern Hemisphere, for many of us, these months are our summer break months, where we are able to kick back, enjoy friends and family and take a well deserved rest. For many of our friends in the Southern Hemisphere, it is the most intensive studying time of the year as you immerse yourselves in the academic focus of your schools. Regardless of whether or not you are in the thick or the thin of it, the focus on social construction of safer, more caring school climates and communities cannot be too far from our minds. Thank you to each one of you who is working to make a difference in this area for out kids, and ultimately for our future.
As I stated before, the research is now clear that kids learn better and learn more when they feel safe, valued and that they matter (please have a look at www.casel.org or Google “social and emotional learning research”). The very BEST time to gather data about your students and their feelings about school is about half way through the year, and is the very BEST time for program implementation. Please have a look at the Bully B’ware Productions Inc. Blackline Masters for surveys to use for different age levels. This is an inexpensive package of ideas that helps schools organize their school wide approach to taking on this most serious issue of bullying.
Once you have the results from that survey, you may want to consider supplementing your resource with the lessons and activities that are targeted to go along with the results from each of the survey questions. As we were working through the survey results at our school, it soon became apparent that we needed lessons and activities that would help us focus on results or particular questions that were of concern to us. For example, we found out that 22% of our students felt “very unsafe and scared”. "kind of nervous” or “so-so” in terms of personal safety on our playground. Once we compared these results to the results we collated from our school map, it was clear that we needed to do some teaching and outlining of behaviour expectations for certain areas of the playground. Our action included developing a “Rights and Responsibilities” chart with the students to determine what they believed they were entitled to, as well as what they were expected to stand up for. This has translated itself into some lesson ideas as well as some follow-up activities. These and other lessons and follow-up activities have been compiled into easy to follow lessons for schools that want to really tackle the issues and unsafe areas that students have identified. Please see our “ordering resources” page on our website for more information.
Now is the time. Whether you are planning for next year or in the middle of your current school year, work needs to be done. We need our parents on board as well supporting us, providing us with information that they learn from their children and practising the same positive behaviours so that we can all make our schools safer places for our kids.
Please watch for the August newsletter where all of our materials and resources will be featured at 15% off until August 15th!! Please remember to contact Bully B’ware Productions Inc if you are planning to place a large order or if you are looking for specialized information. We like to personalize our service.
Bully B'ware Productions
6 Bedingfield Street,
Port Moody,
British Columbia,
Canada V3H 3N1
Telephone/Fax: (604) 936-8000
or 1-888-552-8559
E-mail: info@bullybeware.com
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