Bullying is a real issue in most classrooms. While it has a negative impact on the learning abilities of the victims, it also ruins the pleasure of learning for other students. Educators, across the world, are in a fix on how to deal with bullying in a classroom.
Here is ThatMate’s take on it
1. Educate about bullying
Most educators fail to differentiate bullying incidents from boisterous behaviour. As a teacher trying to minimise bullying in your classroom, your priority must be to identify bullying incidents. It is essential to recognise bullying indicators. For example, male students often resort to physical bullying while female students tend to use social leveraging as their bullying tactics.
This will help you to understand various scenarios and help you prepare rationales that will assist you in educating students, other educators and parents about bullying. Help your students understand how people are affected by bullying and ensure that students understand the consequences of bullying at school.
2. Empower students
In most cases, there are several bystanders in a bullying incident. Empower them to stand up against bullying and ensure there is a safe and confidential reporting mechanism.
3. Communicate with students
Besides, reminding your students that bullying ends when pone person takes a stand, also maintain open communication with students. Often victims are reluctant to report incidents of bullying for fear or embarrassment. Be their haven and strive to build a rapport with them which will encourage them to trust you.
4. Prevent cliques in your classroom
A clique is a group of adolescents that does everything together from enjoying their breaks to socialising beyond school hours. Members of a clique do not socialise outside their group, besides following the decisions of one person alone and are under tremendous peer pressure.
You can prevent cliques from forming by assigning students to groups for various tasks. This helps your students to learn to work in harmony with people who are not part of their groups.
5. Respond to bullying
Address bullying incidents on the spot and do not normalise it. Every time, you take a step against bullying you send a strong message. And the bully learns that his/her actions have consequences and that bullying is no longer an effective tool. Additionally, interact both with the bully and the victim separately. Build trust with the victim and assure them your help in resolving the issue. On the other hand, encourage the bully to own their behaviour and administer appropriate disciplinary action.
6. Keep a close eye on the situation
Once you call out a bullying incident, observe closely the both parties to ensure that there is no repercussions for the victim. This will help the victim develop their confidence and ensure the bully is reminded that his action will not go unnoticed.
ThatMate is a social enterprise that uses lessons, courses, classes, and workshops that are specifically designed to arm the youth with knowledge about their bodies, healthy habits, sexual acceptance, sexuality and more.
Connect with ThatMate to create a safe school that is conducive for learning at team@thatmate.com
By Rituparna Banerjee