Posts tagged bullying prevention

This month, Character Lessons in my first grade classes have been focused on cultivating kindness in our community. We read the book Each Kindness and learned how small, daily acts of kindness can have a large ripple effect–like a pebble tossed in a pond.

This week, we designed and painted our own kindness rocks with encouraging words. We are looking forward to placing them around school grounds next week and knowing that the person who finds it will feel our kindness and hopefully spread it forward to someone else…who will pass it on to someone else…

The most effective bullying prevention efforts in schools and communities are the ones that are cultivated over time, embedded into daily interactions, and focused on skills such as kindness, compassion, empathy, friendship-building, problem-solving, and assertive communication.  Learn more here: https://signewhitson.com/workshop-and-speaking/friendship-other-weapons-group-activities-to-help-young-girls-cope-with-bullying/

Today, I had the pleasure of spending my day with the 4th-7th graders at Pohatcong Township School in New Jersey.  This is my fourth visit to the school in recent years and it’s so awesome to be invited back again and again by a team that is truly dedicated to social-emotional learning in addition to traditional academics.

Last year, I spoke with kiddos about how the small, daily acts of kindness that they do in school are the most powerful way to bring an end to bullying.  We also talked about the difference between rude, mean, and bullying behavior and how to best respond to each one.

This year, we got into even more of the gray area and nuances of peer interactions, talking about the key differences between kidding around with friends and the kind of teasing that creates hurt and upset feelings.  We were all on the same page with the fact that we like to laugh with our friends and that joking around is fun!  Because they could so easily agree that kidding around is one of the best parts of being friends, the kids did a great job at thinking through and identifying when a joke crosses the line into being offensive or unkind–and how to prevent this from happening whenever possible.  We talked about what to do when we have inadvertently crossed the line and made a list of topics that should never (read: ever) be joked about.

With the younger students, I also shared the story, Just Kidding, by Trudy Ludwig.  The kids loved it!  I got to share this autographed copy of the book (courtesy of the author) with one winner of a random drawing, which was a great keepsake!

I taught eight back to back classes and loved every single one of them.  Great kiddos with fantastic insights and lots of say.