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PEACE DYNAMICS CONSULTANTS
The Dynamics of
Bullying Behavior
Aim: How should we handle bullying behaviors?
Instructional/Performance Objectives:
-Students will be able to understand the dynamics of bullying behaviors.
-Students will explore how bullying behaviors and our responses effect us.
Motivational Activity:
-Ask students to write about and/or share a response to this question:
“What would or do you do if you’re being picked on, teased, or bullied?”
-Discuss the students’ responses.
Lesson Procedure:
-Inform the students that it is safe to report bullying behaviors.
-Discuss bullying behaviors as harassment.
-Give students the right to report bullying behaviors with anonymity for the perceived victim of the bullying behavior. (They do not want to be perceived as a tattler.)
-Explore different types of bullying behaviors:
1. Bullying Behavior that is Physical - intent to inflict physical harm or serious physical pain or damage.
2. Bullying Behavior that is Verbal- on-going verbal or written harassment, or insulting, mean name-calling, cruel teasing with intent to humiliate or dehumanize the perceived victim of this behavior, etc.
3. Relational Bullying Behavior- Exclusion from groups, isolation, and serious social setting manipulation with intentional or resulting victimization.
Additional Related Activity:
-Ask students how they feel when they see others being picked on?
-Discuss and critically examine the students’ responses.
-Explore with and explain to the students that they have several choices when they feel they are seeing someone who is victimized by bullying behaviors. Choices include:
Say or do something to help the target.
Leave and get help, seek out a responsible adult.
Do not support bullying behavior by showing approval of these actions.
Talk to the perceived victim and offer them support, comfort, active listening, etc. Let them know you do not support or like what was or is being done to them. Let the perceived victim know that they are not alone, or shouldn’t have to feel alone, let them simply know you care.
Summary:
It is important for communities to respond to bullying behaviors in positive, productive ways.
-Make it safe to report bullying behaviors.
-Trust is essential, without trust perceived victims will be reluctant to report bullying behaviors and they will probably continue and may get worse.
"In the end it is not the words of our enemies we will remember, but the silence of our friends." –Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Remember as a bystander, you are involved in the bullying behavior. (It is your business.) Doing nothing about it is a choice, and it is one that helps the bully behavior continue. Therefore they’re are no truly innocent bystanders when it comes to bullying behaviors.
-Support the perceived victims of bullying behavior by not isolating them from the group or community. Just acknowledge them by asking, “are you alright, is there anything I can do?”
-Support the perceived victims of bullying behaviors, talk to them about their concerns, actively listen, if necessary get help, do the right thing.
The Dynamics of Conflicts
In Our Communities
Aim: What causes conflicts in your life?
Instructional/Performance Objectives:
-Students will be able to learn different strategies in dealing with conflict.
-Students will be able to begin examining conflicts in their communities.
Motivational Activity:
-Ask the students to write about and/or share answers to the following questions:
1. What is important to you? What do you value? What do you need from other people in your community?
2. What do you need to make you happy?
3. In what ways do you think others in your communities can prevent you from getting or having what you think you want or need?
-The instructor may wish to create a community list of individual answers that students are willing to share, asking the students to identify reasons for their choices.
Lesson Procedure:
-Discuss the term conflicts with the students, and how conflicts can be a result of a basic need not being met. Whenever you are denied access to a basic need or obstacles are put in your way, a conflict is generally the result.
-Explain how conflicts develop our wants or needs are not met.
-Discuss how conflict in and of itself is neither negative or positive. Conflict can be destructive when it is not resolved or when it escalates into violence. Conflict can be positive and constructive allowing us to air and examine our differences and move forward by resolving them.
Learning about conflict continued…
Additional Related Activity:
-Divide the class into groups. Ask groups to write and/or share both good and bad things that can come from conflict.
-Create columns on the board with categories such as:
Negative or Bad
Good or Positive
-Guide the class to include certain key words to represent each category.
For example “Negative or Bad” may have words such as fight, hurt and sad. “Positive or Good” may have words such as resolve, peace, and solutions.
Summary:
-Conflict occurs when there are differences within the individual or between individuals or groups over resources, psychological needs, or values.
- Therefore, the elements for the peaceful settlement of a conflict are found in the conflict itself.
-In undertaking this work, you are embarking on a task that is potentially very rewarding. It must begin with the belief that children and adults can develop a new awareness and a willingness to examine and change conflict behaviors.
-Not all conflicts are negative. We can learn from conflict. Conflict can inspire growth and understanding.
-It is important to recognize that resolving conflicts can be at time a difficult and daunting task. Most conflicts cannot be neatly resolved; some may not be resolvable at all. But simply addressing the needs of the people involved and learning something about ourselves can be a learning experience in itself.
-Remember to never attempt to resolve a conflict in the heat of battle. The most successful conflict resolutions occur when cooler heads prevail.
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