Standard V: School Decision Making and Advocacy

Standard V: School Decision Making and Advocacy

Bullying:

Bullying negatively affects the atmosphere of a school and disrupts the learning environment. It takes the entire school community to create an inviting school where everyone feels they belong and are safe. Working together, as a team of administrators, teachers, school staff, parents, and students can help stop bullying in our school.
As a teacher, I will involve parents through active communication from the first day of school to create a policy that will strengthen the learning environment and diminish all forms of bullying. This will occur through an introduction to creating the classroom policy (which will align with district policy) at back to school night. I will form a committee of parents willing to look closely at the concerns and strategies for eliminating bullying. We will communicate through email, meetings and phone calls.  We will set target dates to accomplish all aspects of this policy as well as a final finish date.

Areas of concern that I would suggest to add to class policy:

·         Talk with children. Do not just ignore the bullying problem or hope it will go away. Tell your child that you are concerned and that you'd like to help.

·         Inform and teach child about cyber-bullying.

·         Empathize with your child. Do not assume that your child did something to provoke the bullying. For instance, do not ask things like, “What did you do to aggravate the other child?”

·         Work together to find solutions. Ask your children what he or she thinks can be done to help, and reassure him or her that the situation can be handled and still keep them safe.

·    Learn how to identify and intervene in bullying incidents.

·    Re-examine current bullying school policy and update.

·    Check out resources you can use to make your school safer.

Possible barriers: Language, communication, and time.

Overcoming barriers: There are resources available that teach in multiple languages about the issue of bullying. I would use online videos to first inform and educate parents that want to be involved in creating this policy. I would use an interpreter during this policy making process. I would also provide a name of a tutor that would be willing to help the parents of ESL students.