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Bullying Free Week

Susan Jackson —

Bullying-Free NZ Week theme Whakanuia Tōu Āhua Ake! Celebrating Being Us!.

This week we have been involved in Bully Free NZ Week, finishing up with Pink Shirt Day today. During the week our Student Exec, with the support of the teachers, have been involved in activities to strengthen our existing programmes. They have looked at what bullying behaviour is, the effects of bullying, what to do if you are bullied or see bullying happen and being kind. This year so far there has been a big focus on Cyber Safety, kindness and demonstrating respect through appropriate manners.

West Melton School encourages respect, values opinions, celebrates differences and promotes positive relationships. We do that quite deliberately so that bullying behaviour does not thrive or be tolerated. To achieve this, it needs everyone, staff, students, Board, parents and whānau working together. As we know, bullying happens in all environments.

Our teachers this year have had a lot of professional learning development (PLD) in teaching for positive behaviour which includes collaboratively developing behaviour expectations, establishing a supportive physical environment and explicitly teaching routines as well as Cyber Safety.

This is what the Student Exec researched and shared this week

What is Bullying?

Bullying is different from fighting resulting from a one-off conflict or argument. It is different from play-fighting.

Bullying usually has four common features:

  • it is deliberate, hurtful behaviour

  • it is repeated

  • it is difficult for those being bullied to defend themselves.

  • Bullying happens in a relationship between one child and another child or group where some form of abuse of power is used to hurt or reject someone.

There are 4 main types of bullying …

1. Verbal e.g. name calling, insulting remarks, nasty notes

2. Emotional e.g. being left out of things, no-one talking to you, (social & psychological) being threatened, pressured to do things cyber bullying including text and social website bullying)

3. Physical e.g. being hit, kicked, pushed.

3 Cyber bullying: Using social media to repeatedly bully or cause harm to another

Verbal, social and psychological forms are much more common than material or physical bullying. Name-calling is by far the most common form. How serious the bullying is depends on things such as, how often it happens and for how long, how much the bullied child was hurt, how much threat was used, and how many were involved.

Resources for discussing bullying at home can be found on the Bullying Free NZ website.