¶ … Anti-Bullying Campaign
One of the most critical facets of actually implementing this project and seeing it through to completion pertained to the cooperation I obtained from both the principal and the teachers at this particular learning institution. The principal gave his permission to allow the anti-bullying campaign be the focus of Thursday morning's assembly. As such, we were tasked with posting all of the signage during the preceding days in the week so that there would be visual reinforcements for the assembly, and so students would be already exposed to some of the anti-bullying rhetoric on Thursday.
I was pleased (and perhaps a little surprised) at the degree of cooperation I received from the other educators at this school. More than a few of them lauded me for taking a proactive stance to counteracting bullying and enforcing classroom management, which is one of the central concepts in P.R.A.I.S.E. that wanted to incorporate into this project (Ackerman, 2007). It appears that my efforts and this campaign were aligned with many of the values of these educators, who likely experienced the need for such a campaign at various points in their careers. Additionally, I was able to directly engage the students themselves in this process by getting the first and second grade instructors to actually have some of their students create posters that were adorned throughout the campus and inside of classrooms. This experience was integral in familiarizing students with this concept and helping the program to gain traction even before the assembly. Again, this aspect of the project certainly emphasized the proactive nature that is valuable to classroom management (Ackerman, 2007).
Nonetheless, I believe that the visual tools helped to assist the project mostly because of the way in which they framed the phenomenon of bullying. Most of these materials were angled so that they empowered students against bullying by making it seem heroic or righteous to counteract the efforts of bullies. Doing so certainly involved getting teacher support for this concept. Some of the teachers did not necessarily think that such an approach would be effective, and that it actually might possibly incite violence or create even greater situations of antagonism than would have otherwise...
However, when I was able to demonstrate empirical evidence about the validity of this approach and its status as actually an evidence-based practice related to teaching, many of the teachers were able to understand its relevance to the campaign.
In particular, the concepts of empathy and social cost seemed to resonate with teachers (Peets et al., 2015, p. 916). Convincing the teachers of this fact proved extremely valuable to this project overall, because it enabled this framework (of standing up to bullies as something admirable and socially beneficial) to encompass an area of life that actually resonated with the students. Some of the instructors even remarked to me that there was a degree of enthusiasm evinced in a number of their students as they created some of the visual materials for the project. Still, I trace the degree of excitement and understanding about this approach to the anti-bullying campaign back to the rapport I was able to establish with the teachers for this issue, and the empirical evidence that supported this viewpoint and which was not disputed by these instructors.
Nonetheless, it was critical to note the other important aspect of this framework, which is directly related to the foregoing one. The campaign also emphasized the fact that bullying others was not something that is desirable, because it actually reflects an ongoing problem with the perpetrator of such an act. This tenet was actually critical to what I perceive as the success of this program. What was at the core of the program was an 180 degree shift of the conception of bullying. I was able to explicate this shift to the teachers and principal during training sessions that took place both before and after the assembly, in which the focus was helping students who do encounter instances of bullying. However, this shift is based on the perception that it is the bully who actually has the more pervasive, longstanding problem. Thus, the bully is the one deserving of help ultimately. Framed this way, the common perception that it is fun to be a bully, to get others to give you their lunch money or to do your homework for you, is intrinsically incorrect. Instead, the focus of the materials, the training sessions, and the assembly itself was the notion that those who bully themselves have…
