Bullying. No way!

Every Thursday I take prospective parents on a tour of our school. It is a wonderful opportunity to walk and talk with new families, put new students’ minds at ease and answer any questions or worries people have. I am often asked ‘do you have bullying here?’

Friday 17 November was National Day of Action against Bullying and Violence. 4W and 3D performed an entertaining assembly item which outlined the issues behind bullying and appropriate responses to it. I really do love how our kids can describe what bullying is and also understand what ‘mean moments’ are, and how the two are different. Teaching children a language they can use to help themselves and their friends is such a powerful way to end this insidious behaviour.

So, at Assembly on that Friday I asked the kids what they thought I said when new families asked me if there was bullying in our school. Overwhelmingly, most thought I said ‘no’. I’m hopeful that this is because so few actually experience bullying in its pure form of repeated negative attention that won’t stop. A few kids piped up that they thought I would say ‘yes’.

And they were right. I do say ‘yes’. And when parents ask this question, I add that any school who says their kids don’t bully others is not being quite truthful, and that bullying, unfortunately, exists everywhere in society – in schools, in sporting clubs or other cultural pursuits, and in the workplace. However, I also tell parents that every single teacher in this school is committed to assisting children who report bullying (and mean moments) or who ask for help – every single one. It’s a commitment we make at the beginning of every year. That commitment leads to every teacher explicitly teaching conflict resolution, assertive behaviours, the language for asking for help and just about any other skill that is developmentally appropriate for a child to grow the strength to take a stand and say ‘Bullying. No Way!’

What really matters...

 All Principals of Independent Public Schools were called into Central Office this week and while everyone was enjoying the Book Week Assembly I listened to a lot of things about School Reviews and inputs and outputs and NAPLAN and outcomes and a bit more about reviews... Hmmm.... Not the most riveting of material.

It got me thinking about what matters, and about what really matters. And it's kids that matter, and it's what they are learning that really matters.

Last week one of our teachers told me that while on duty he had observed Bradley in tears on the ball courts. He saw that Jenny and Suzy had just spoken to him so he asked them what had happened before he then spoke with Bradley himself. Jenny told him that Bradley had been left out of the boy's soccer game because they had even teams already and didn’t want uneven teams. (This seemed a bit mean but to be fair to the boys, Bradley was playing a different game before wanting to join their game). Before the teacher could even say anything in an attempt to resolve the situation – Suzy pipes up and says, 'Maybe I should offer to play too; that way there’d be even teams?' So, off the girls went, called Bradley over, joined the game and everyone was happy.

This is what really matters. We are teaching kids to solve problems peacefully, to walk in the shoes of others, to be inclusive. And every day we see they are getting it.

This kind of learning leaves inputs, outputs and reviews for dead!

(I've changed the names but I bet these lovely kids could identify themselves if they read this.)

What are we really on about?

Last week at our school leadership meeting we had a flurry of discussion about our 'targets' for 2015. It suddenly became important that everyone should know what the school's focus would be for 2015. Well, it's Reading... Writing... Numeracy... - of course it is. What else would we be putting our energies into?

So this little graphic began to be seen everywhere.

Peregian Springs State School

2015 whole school focus for every learner *Reading    *Writing    *Numeracy

We really want all kids to be successful readers and writers and to be numerate - research shows that if you can read and write, everything else is teachable. And more, if you can read and write to a high level, everything else is teachable AND you are ahead of the game. Readers and writers increase their life chances in terms of income, health, participation in political life, and longevity. So who wouldn't want that?

As the week wore on I was finding it hard to get excited about reading, writing and numeracy. I glossed over it at the P&C Meeting and also threw in the Department's mantra about attendance.
 

Peregian Springs State School

2015 whole school focus for every learner *Reading    *Writing    *Numeracy

Attendance

Of course, we need kids at school if we are going to help them be active participants in their own lives and in their communities. But it still wasn't doing it for me.

A huge part of learning is mental health and social and emotional literacy. So in went Student Wellbeing. 

Peregian Springs State School

2015 whole school focus for every learner *Reading    *Writing    *Numeracy

Attendance

Student Wellbeing

Hmmmmm....

Then it dawned on me that these are all results. They are admirable results, of course, but as an educator and a parent, I want more than results. I've often said over the last five and half years that I wanted to build a school kids and staff couldn't wait to get to every day.

Peregian Springs State School

2015 whole school focus for every learner *Reading    *Writing    *Numeracy

Attendance

Student Wellbeing

Happy kids and staff who can’t wait to get to school everyday

Knowing our kids and staff are happy - that's what gets me up everyday. This is what is exciting about 2015 - our sixth year. This is our 'target'. It's always been our target. And why is that?

It's because we all care deeply about the success of our students and our school. We've built a whole school team around this purpose, and it's what we strive for every day.
 

Peregian Springs State School

2015 whole school focus for every learner *Reading    *Writing    *Numeracy

Attendance

Student Wellbeing

Happy kids and staff who can’t wait to get to school everyday

Why? Because we care deeply about the success of our students and our school

Common Courtesies - doing it naturally

I was visiting 2M last Thursday afternoon and as I cast my eyes around the room for somewhere to sit, little Jack says 'Sit here, Ms Sands' and patted the empty desk next to him. He then raced over to the corner of the room with an 'I'll get you a chair'.

And later that day as I was leaving the office laden down with my brief case, lunch bag, hand bag and other myriad things I seem to collect to take home every day, young Amaya says 'Let me get the door for you'.

This is common courtesy at it's best, and I'm so proud it happens in our school not only every day but multiple times a day.

We do teach Common Courtesies. We have a list of ten we've all decided are the really important ones. It includes things like saying please, thank you, excuse me and good morning; things like knocking politely and waiting by a door for an invitation in; things like using people's names when you address them. Our list is displayed in every classroom and we usually send it home in the newsletter once a year asking parents to reinforce the same at home.

Common courtesies are taught as a routine in our school. We can't just assume that children will know how good manners make the world go round. So by teaching these few courtesies explicitly we can at the very least ensure they have some standard ways of behaving that help them draw people closer to them.

Our kids' manners are the first things noticed by every visitor to our school. People find it so surprising.

But what I love is that they don't just know the script, know the routine and just say it - they do it naturally. Caring for others and displaying common courtesy is common place at Peregian Springs. Thank you to all parents who help us reinforce this!

Be kind to each other...

The other morning before school I walked down the pathway towards the senior school and one of the Year 4 boys grabbed his handball and said 'Are you alright, Ms Sands?' I looked at him in surprise, 'Yes, sweetheart, I'm fine.' 'Oh, that's good - you were holding your tummy and I thought you were sick.' And with that he went back to his game.

The night before I had received a distressing email from a parent who was clearly at her wits end about the swearing and racist name calling her children were being exposed to in the playground. Her concern was that this sort of talk was virtually being tolerated in our school. And she believes that we are not doing enough to challenge the behaviour and stop it.

I've been mulling over these two incidents ever since. On one hand we have children demonstrating spontaneous acts of kindness and care, and on the other, a small (very small) group of students who think swearing and racist commentary as they go about kicking a ball around is a perfectly okay way to speak and play.

In a school where a premium is placed on social and emotional development, where dedicated lessons in social and emotional literacy are taught every week in every classroom, where our efforts in this area are recognised as outstanding by the Department of Education, where dedicated staff work with individual and groups of children to assist them develop self awareness, self management and respect, and where all staff display and model integrity, kindness and compassion; how is it that the thoughtless actions of a few give rise to the perception that all children are behaving like this and that it is being tolerated?

I love our kids - the well behaved ones, the naughty ones, the ones who smile and wave, the ones who swear, the ones who look horrified when someone says unkind words, the ones still learning what unkind words are, the ones with tons of friends and the ones struggling to form relationships with others - all of them, I love all of them. And as a school we will continue to teach them how to be humans of the highest integrity in our world through our learning programs, expectations, and processes for dealing with less than desirable events and behaviour.

We need parents to partner with us in this. We need parents to stand by us and reinforce with their children what is acceptable and not acceptable in our world, parents who censor what films their children watch and what video games they play, parents who discuss the effects of racist and sexist language with their children, parents who are prepared to take a stand with us and tell their children that 'enough is enough' and that swearing and name calling needs to stop, and parents who feel so strongly about this issue that other parents who tolerate it feel pressure to monitor their own behaviour.

We can do this together and we need to be kind to each other...