"Talking Heads" Jenny Mosley in the hotseat discusses combating bullying - February to March 2004
Wed, Sep 22nd 2004
“Combating Bullying Through Pro-active Listening"
Started on : 27-FEB-2004 01:00 AM
Ended on : 15-MAR-2004 01:00 AM
Bullying is a complex term. In a sense it means one person taking away another’s power. Adults can bully each other and children; children can bully each other and adults.
Quality Circle Time. A broad eco-systemic model was developed to help schools set up systems that enable people to feel valued and respected. Listening and responding to people is at the heart of the process.
I have been in many of your schools and many of you have kindly attended my workshops. Together we have, over the years, tried to set up systems to support all members of the school community.
How is it going? My experience tells me that sometime the values we display as golden rules, backed up by golden time can often become rusty! Circle Time itself can lose its vibrancy and potential to be a dynamic emotional curriculum. Even out playtime ideas, like the friendship stops and playground hats, can become rain-stained and lacklustre!
This week offers you the chance to write in with any worries, concerns or success stories relating to the model. I am happy to try my best to shine up the systems with you so that we all feel confident that they give every individual the best opportunity to reach their potential.
Q: What do you advise when there is discord amongst staff which goes back for years and is almost embedded in school life?
Q: I would be interested in joining this debate. In a small community sometimes pressures/tensions outwith school impinge upon relationships in and amongst staff and pupils. No answers I am a afraid...
Jenny: Phew, you are posing one of the most intransigent problems ever! I do a lot of team building for staff and quite often the personal & professional ‘wounds’ are almost impossible to help heal. Over the years I have worked in many situations where there are teachers who have their own problems at home they are powerless to change so therefore, sometimes unconsciously, exercise their power negatively within schools. I know this sounds strange but if people are disempowered somewhere in their life they will seize power back by trying to affect someone else’s life. There are some teachers who it suits to stay angry with people in school rather than face some of the hurt or pain they have in their own personal lives. It is a hugely complex issue and almost impossible to open up the problem to the pure chill air of growth and change; as the persons involved are not able to admit the truth to themselves. Many adults are in ‘outer locus of control’. They blame everyone else eg ‘if only I had a different headteacher I’d be a new person, if only the kids have more discipline at home I’d be able to teach so much more’, therefore they don’t take responsibility for what actually is within their control to change.
The purpose of education is to help children develop inner locus of control; but I often think that adults need this journey more than children.
So, what to do? Firstly you need to shore up your own self esteem and see the situation through a psychological lens – it’s a historical story and you should not be taking any of it personally. Work very hard on a series of training days with all the staff on the vision of a happy school. Deep down most teachers are very good hearted and want the best for children. If you explore a million ways to raise the self esteem of children by creating systems that celebrate success and achievement – it becomes clear to those members of staff that their own discord may damage the vision – and ultimately damage children’s happiness. Get in a consultant, not to work on ‘team building, as this annoys people – but to create a conference for the staff on a work/life balance. Many many schools are introducing their staff on stress management days to yoga, massage, Reiki, dance, art – a series of workshops where people can relax, laugh, play and remember that there is another side to each other when away from everyday pressures. Have an African week. Bring in African bands – the rhythms, the colours and the movement are irresistible – happy faces everywhere. Have a staff social committee to organise a series of fun events – don’t judge the staff who don’t want to come. Have fun with those that do want to come. Create a shared bond of memories in a staff Golden Moments book. Decorate the school toilet – yesterday I was in a school who had themed each of their toilets. There was a Chill Out, a Summers Garden and a Cute & Cuddly – flowers, pictures, scent and humour, sound made going to the loo a joy – and everyone was smiling. Have a staff meeting once a term that focuses only on Staff Achievement; take them out to a hotel for scones and jam and celebration. Have a golden board in the staff room to display any thank you letters, achievements or scribbled notes of appreciation, don’t judge the staff who don’t want to come. Have fun with those that do want to come. Create a shared bond of memories in a staff Golden Moments book. Decorate the school toilet – yesterday I was in a school who had themed each of their toilets. There was a Chill Out, a Summers Garden and a Cute & Cuddly – flowers, pictures, scent and humour, sound made going to the loo a joy – and everyone was smiling. Have a staff meeting once a term that focuses only on Staff Achievement; take them out to a hotel for scones and jam and celebration. Have a golden board in the staff room to display any thank you letters, achievements or scribbled notes of appreciation.
I am afraid I could go on and on … basically if there is too much discord it will affect the adult’s immune systems and lower children’s enjoyment of school. I am sure other headteachers out there have got tips and advice to offer as well. It is a horribly common problem so don’t lose sleep over it. I often give a very unkind image to head teachers. Sometimes, in certain staff rooms, I see an emotional ‘swamp’ where one or two key members of cynical staff are deeply embedded. Nearby there is a lovely colourful lush jungle with one or two light hearted members of staff frolicking around having fun with each other, and on the edge of the swamp there are a few members of staff who could either be pulled into the swamp or pulled over to frolic in the jungle. The temptation of the head is to try and get the ‘swampies’ out on to dry land; I tell heads not to bother as quite a few other head teachers have tried and been sucked into the murky grey mess already. Your efforts need to go to middle ‘plodders’ – create enough fun opportuinities for everyone so the ethos and vision of the school is about respect and fun…eventually the ‘swampies’ will have to make a choice as they will be in a minority. Either join in, leave or quietly get on with their job. (well that’s the hope).
I know this is too rambling – but as another writer said on the 29th February… “no answers I’m afraid”…just lots of ideas!!
Q: We use Circle Time from N-P7 in our school and discussions are always great. However I have a specific problem: I have a bully in the school whose big brother was a bully and has inherited his title. I can't get the rest to stop feeling threatened. They do whatever he says, pick his work for awards, etc. Parents come in when I ask but with little effect. How can I be for effective as a HT? Many thanks.
Jenny: Isn’t it amazing how difficult it is to get to the heart of a bullying problem? It is so multi-layered. Strangely a person who bullies often has low self-esteem. If you feel good enough about yourself you don’t need to ride rough shod over other peoples feelings. Seizing power by hurting others is one way of feel temporarily in control. For whatever reason his brother took on the role of bully which would have fed his need for attention and the feeling of being ‘somebody’…and now this lad has followed in the same path.
Building self-esteem is the first step towards helping children and adults to feel important without feeling the need to dominate another. Many schools in golden time encourage the older children to go and work with the younger children. The P7’s will submit maths games or construction toys ideas to their teacher in order that they can go down and teach younger children. There is an old Indian proverb, which says, “If you want to help a child let them help someone else”. It might be good to think of many ways he could use his power benignly. If you could help him to build a reputation as a helper it might help combat the current reputation. Do you have Playground Friends in your school? Would he be interested in applying and getting a role at lunchtime that supports other people?
Some schools bring in older people for Circle Time and/or Golden Time. Often pupils discover another side to themselves when interacting with different people. Is this a possibility? How well is Circle Time run in the school? If it is just sitting around discussing issues and problems it won’t be powerful enough. Circle Time should teach and emotional curriculum, i.e. how to negotiate, resolve conflict, ask for and give help, give and receive praise and solving problems as a group. Does it have this dimension to it? It should be pacey, focused and developmental if it is to teach children new skills.
Back to our young man; try as many ways as you can to get the class to see him in a different light. You might make ‘Being Kind’ a theme for the week. We have class target sheets where the whole class works towards their chosen goal. If this pupil was able to demonstrate kindness (with your help) …then the class will see him earning points for all of them. Just as it is possible to earn a bad reputation, it is possible to earn a good reputation. With the help of your staff you could all concentrate on the positive and, as far as possible, ignore the negative and lets see how this approach works. I wonder if any other headteachers have any ideas to add to mine. We would all be grateful!
Q: Hello Jenny. Thanks for such a detailed response. I've left a 'sticky' for you. However I'd be interested to see what others reading this section have to say about staffing issues.
Q: Another thorny problem! We have a little girl who has some learning difficulties and can be a bit silly but recently we have been pleased to see her joining in and socialising well. Another child brought in invitations from home for a birthday party - everyone was invited except her! It seems the parents didn’t want her there. She is distressed. How do we repair the damage?
Jenny: How horrible. It’s my worst fear to see someone left out so cruelly as that. I know as a parent with a child in a very tough school full of emotionally needy and disadvantaged children I would struggle sometimes with a concept of the whole class birthday party. But you would either go for the option of a handful of selected friends or the whole class but never the whole class, minus the one or two you didn’t want there. That is unkind in the extreme.
The damage is done and it was very hurtful. One of my consultants has been working on a story for circle time. It features Mouse and Turtle. It’s all about Millie Mouse sending invitations out, and the invitation are all proper small printed invitations to everyone in her animal class except Turtle, because he is so slow and won’t be able to join in the games properly. All the invitations are read out and then Turtle comes out of the bag and watches and feels very sad. It’s heart breaking Greek tragedy stuff. Truly, I think metaphor is your only answer. You need to use puppets, poems and toys to explore the theme of being left out and how it makes you feel. Again, make ‘We Are Friends’, a theme for the class and the circle times. In some schools we have set up a system whereby a girl and a boy is elected as Class Friend for the day. They have a big fluorescent badge and then they are on Friendship Duty for the day. This means that they are friendly and helpful to the teacher but, more importantly, at lunchtime, their task is to make sure that all the children in their class have someone to play with. After lunch we have the ritual of Tell and Good Tale, where other pupils thanks the Class Friends for making sure they were happy and had games to play. In circle time on step four children would be nominated by other children for asking them into games, being kind, sharing etc. Again the ethos of friendship for this class has to be so strong that the child at home in the face or their parents lack of empathy feel strong enough inside to insist that everyone is included.
You need to think about your school brochure and what it says about inclusion and values. We can never stop this type of situation from happening but it is one of the strongest reasons I have kept going with circle time. None of us can bear the thought of a child distraught at being marginalized. Still, children are resilient, puppets and books are healing, special child of the week is a great strategy and there is much that we can do to sure up the flag of friendship within that class. Good Luck.
Q: I have enjoyed reading your articles and responses to questions. I can understand what you are saying about staff and the 'inner locus of control' and can totally identify with the swampy bit and not getting pulled in - I've been there! It makes such a difference to everyone when the balance in the staffroom tips to the fun positive side. We are lucky in our school that we have the positive balance. No questions just a thank you.
Q: Thanks Jenny. Very helpful. Really like the idea of 'Friendship Duty'. We are thinking of setting up a small buddies and friends group and invite children to volunteer to take part at lunch times for three day slots. The buddies will be P7's and the rest from the P5 class concerned (at the start). We believe the childen themselves may have a valuable part to play in healing our wee girl. We will also use your other suggestions!
Q: Do you know of any good resources about assisting primary children in dealing with conflict in the playground? My school has great children who generally get on really well but I would love some information about peer counselling for children or how to empower then to work more effectively through their issues.
Jenny: Well, obviously I am going to recommend my own resources as I am not that altruistic!!! I love the latest book I wrote with Georgia called All Year Round; Exciting Ideas for Peaceful Playtimes. It’s a comprehensive practical manual with lots of case studies from schools in it. It even gives you a six week training programme for playground buddies. There are lots of ideas in this book to help empower children during lunchtimes.
Equally, Lorna Farringtons, Playground Peacemakers, is very useful. (Loxley Enterprises 2000) And Lets Mediate by Hilary Stacy and Pat Robinson (Lucky Duck 1997). Both these books give lots of ideas on how to help children become more effective at lunchtime. My premise is that if children are involved in enough exciting ideas they won’t become so involved in conflict. We encourage schools to teach playground games in PE and to demonstrate games in Circle Time. We also encourage schools to start something called Craze Of The Week. Each week the school will start off a Monday assembly with a new craze; skipping, juggling, hoola hoops, French Skipping – then a huge box of that activity is sent out for a week only and then the craze is changed for the following week. There are a million ideas schools can implement to make lunchtimes a really fruitful time. I get worried when I work in schools that have not provided enough exciting ideas, but are providing wonderful mediators, as it encourages children to create conflict in order to gain attention. I know this does not apply in your case – but I do want schools to involve the whole school community in working out a lunchtime policy…and only then bring in mediation; once they are happy with what children are learning. We also have a supervised community task force, comprising of a group of children who are kept so busy they cannot get into trouble. I hope you can get the book as it is full of these types of ideas. Good Luck
Q: Hi Jenny, thanks for all the responses to date, they are very interesting and thought provoking. I would like to ask something on a slightly different tack. When does bullying become bullying? I find that almost any squabble is seen by a lot of pupils and parents as bullying and not as one off disagreements. I am not condoning these or making light of them, but they are a long way from bullying. The term seems to have been "captured" and now means any conflict between pupils. Is this because of the high profile bullying rightly has and how it is misunderstood by some.
Inclusion is another area of our schools that can generate bullying. Have you experience of how truly inclusive schools have approached this, both from the included pupil and the others in a group / class / school?
Jenny: I know exactly what you mean. When I run circletimes with children and I have a round of ‘I don’t like it when…’, children will often say ‘ I don’t like it when I am bullied’. Later in the discussion we will find out that the child is referring to the fact that another child chose to leave her out of a game or they weren’t allowed to sit next to their best friend in the dining hall. It is almost if the word ‘bullying’ has come to mean ‘hurt feelings’. I think it’s important that schools do sit down and discuss what is meant by bullying…although ‘hurt feelings’ also deserve total attention. It is useful to have a circletime suggestion box where children can put in things they are worried about so we can deal with the issue without calling it bullying. There was one in the box from a little girl who said ‘what do you do when you cannot sleep at night because you haven’t got a best friend?’ This is not a case of the class bullying her, but it is a case of a child needing support. I tend not to use the word bullying at all when I am working with children or doing assemblies. I use the Golden Rules, ‘we are gentle…we are kind…we listen…etc, etc…’ and we talk specifically about each of these values. I think language can define problems. If the children hear a lot of vocabulary around bullying they will take it home and parents will pick up on it.
If circle time is used well…and often it is just an extended moan about problems…but if it is vibrant, exciting and positive it has a wonderful potential to help a school truly become inclusive. Step four in Circle Time encourages children to nominate other children, who are not their best friend, for kindness to others. Today I was working with children in P7 and I asked them ‘who are you pleased with in your class because they never get irritated with anyone and they always include people?’. They nominated various children and then the whole class signed the certificates for these children. If the ethos of a school is about celebrating the kindness and gentleness of children – then the school will move towards a true spirit of inclusion. I am more worried about staff not being inclusive towards other staff. Quite often we have teachers not including teaching assistants in some of the planning and the strategies for working with difficult children. In some schools the teachers do not value to midday supervisor and there has been no whole school training with every adult invited – including the janitor.
Soooo…it’s a whole school issue. Your values, rewards, sanctions and listening systems all have to embrace inclusion. I’m sure lots of other heads will have some great ideas. Thank you for raising this important issue.
Q: I have recently dealt with a bullying issue and had to address the guilt of the bullied. They felt guilty about how powerless they felt. Have you experienced this legacy of guilt and how did you deal with it?
Jenny: I think you and I have talked a few times before! You are talking about a very subtle sensitive area. In the field of adult therapy there is a lot written about adults who are co-dependants in a cycle of violence and how they feel guilty that somehow they allowed the other person to carry on hurting them. In every situation where someone has been physically or emotionally hurt there is always that terrible feeling that, ‘if only I had reacted differently, I could have stopped this happening’.
We all feel guilty that we can’t stop things from happening around us. Parents and teachers feel guilty that they can’t protect the children. It’s a very natural progression for someone to feel guilty that they can’t protect themselves. There is a well know syndrome of the self-elected victim and secretly many children and adults wonder if they have attracted the bullying to themselves.
If someone has experienced deep powerlessness they will suffer from very low self-esteem and waves of anxiety. The way to heal is to give them other strategies that will allow them to re-build their self-esteem. If someone has been hurt initially they need to be able to talk it out or play it out. When this process has been gone through, then its time to find ways where you can be powerful over your environment and the people around you. Schools have millions of ways of building children’s self-esteem and I am sure if you and his teacher and class and parents could possibly work together you could come up with lots of ideas to help this person feel important, valued and strong again. You are very wise in the way you have interpreted his reaction.
Q: We have a great bunch of children and although there are the inevitable squabbles and fall outs, the ethos of the school supported by positive approaches and Circle Time etc generally works. However, we have a boy who is in denial. He disrupts the classroom and playground friendships but it's never him! Even when he is caught doing something red-handed, he denies it! It is very hard to help him to face his difficulties when he won't take responsibility for his actions and he spends all his thinking time in discussion wondering who he can blame. We have gone down the usual route of discussions with parents, incentives, friendship diaries etc but it is very hard to move him forward when he cannot accept that his behaviour is causing distress to others. Any suggestions?
Jenny: Again, this is a child who is in total outer-locus of control. If I worked with him in circle time instead of him saying I need help because I annoy other people, he would say ‘I need help because she keeps winding me up!’ I know that I keep harping on about the same issue as a theme throughout this weeks responses but a child who already feels bad about themselves cannot bear to allow any more negative feedback into his world.
Some children are addicted to failure because failure is safe, it is easier to blame everyone else than face the self-dislike and well of misery deep inside themselves. They deliberately wind people up, get into trouble and then when the adults or their peers get angry or cross with them it confirms their world view that they are a waste of time. To change means to become vulnerable and to look forward to something. For many of these children this is a huge in surmountable obstacle, ‘staying bad’ is safe and gives them control over their world and stops them from looking forward to anything or becoming too vulnerable.
Any problems to do with low self esteem can be deeply entrenched. We have to work on something called Tiny Achievable Tickable Targets. Small experiences of success can help people to change slowly. We need to find this child a new identity. He has firmly go the identity now that he is the trouble maker, that no-one likes him so he is committed to a path of being his only protector and defending himself at every stage. It is too big a step to ask him to face his own behaviour. Only when he has a new identity as a ‘clerical helper’, ‘conservationist’, ‘school horticulturalist’ (all identities based on responsibilities and jobs that schools can give children) will he be able to eventually face the truth of his other identity. Without a new identity he has nothing to support him and he will be left bereft.
Q: How do you get negative playground helpers on board? (the ones who need to visit the toilet after the play-time bell) despite reminders general and personal (you are picking on them). They were involved in staff development but think that we've tried it all before.
Jenny: I’m a little bit confused here, but it is very early the morning of a long week. Do you mean the adult playground helpers or the children playground helpers? Can you come back to me with a few more explicit examples as I would hate to write a screed that didn’t help you at all!
Q: I was at the end of a very long day. I mean ancillary staff who have been School Helpers for the last 12 years. These ladies avoid old playgrounds or huddle together for a chat -ignoring zones they are supposed to be in.
Jenny: I know the lovely women you describe! You are highlighting a massive problem! I really would love you though to read my book, ‘All Year Round – exciting ideas for peaceful playtimes’. It gives millions of ideas to build self-esteem and self-value of these ladies so they are more likely to want to change. It gives lots of ideas on how to involve them in decision making, welcome boards, assemblies, circle times and golden times so that children perceive the school as giving value to them. There has to be a huge attitudinal shift before this merry band will try out and take on new initiatives. You need to involve the parents in raising money for lunchtimes so that these midday supervisors are paid for the meetings they come to. We have rewards and sanctions, which help the midday’s feel safe enough to try out new ideas, we have little playground game booklets to go in their tabards. I even have a little book that is to be given directly to them called Guidelines for Midday Supervisors. In that slim booklet they are urged to ‘stay calm, not have favourites, practise fairness’, and it is all in very accessible language.
It may even be worth you getting together with a cluster of schools to host a training day with all your midday supervisors and teachers and even some parents and have a day on a ‘whole school approach to happier lunchtimes’. We have training consultants who run these days for lots of schools. So all in all it is a huge body of knowledge and I would have to write another email book to give you all the ideas. It takes at least a year using our approach before there are even any minor shifts. But the wonderful news is that eventually your whole school can release excellence through unified approach to positive lunchtimes. Hold onto that thought at the end of a long miserable day when they have been shouting and there is a line of children outside your office! Good luck!
Tell a friend
Enter yours and a friends name to send them this page.
