15th - 19th November Anti-Bullying Week

'Taking Action Together'

My bullying eventually culminated in a serious incident where the bullies finally caught up with me.  I was badly beaten up and my mother became involved.  Even years later I can still recall the terror of finding myself standing alone in the dark and being jumped on from behind by the vicious ringleader who was repeatedly hitting me in the back of the head.  She and her friends had made it their mission to make my life not worth living; and they could quite easily have achieved their goal that night if my big sister hadn't intervened and whisked me home in a taxi. 

"What does not kill me makes me stronger" ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Although I would like to say that my bullying made me stronger, what springs to mind all these years later is that my secondary school didn't intervene during this traumatic period.  In those 'good old, bad old days' of the school cane and ball bearings hidden in the bottom of school ties, we can't overlook the fact that adults were often critical of children for not responding to threats of violence by saying "Why don't you just stand up for yourself?"  Corporal punishment itself gave out a mixed message that it was ok for a big person to hurt a smaller person.  Of course it was not entirely the school's fault as they had no idea that I was being bullied; but I also had no one to tell.  I am absolutely sure that things have changed nowadays and Ringwood Comprehensive would be horrified if they knew they had a terrified pupil hiding in their toilets, with their feet tucked up on the seat waiting for the bell to ring.  But the sad fact is that there will always be victims and there will always be perpetrators - and being a little bit quirky and different from the other kids isn't always a good thing when you're 15 years old.

So let's move onto happier times where the teachers no longer throw wooden board rubbers at children's heads to wake them up.  Hopefully you have not failed to see all the fantastic press coverage to launch this year's Anti-Bullying Week.  The focus has been upon the whole community taking a stand against bullying.  Luckily nowadays there are numerous videos that schools can use to raise awareness amongst pupils and parents (for instance try Beat Bullying on You Tube) and there are also many, many fabulous teaching resources, training courses, reference materials etc. to be found online at sites such as at Kidscape, Teachernet, Bully Online and Bullying UK.  I have also been impressed by a web site that I stumbled upon by accident.  It offers very useful, practical and realistic advice to parents whose child is being bullied - please feel free to take a peek at Rocket Mums.  In addition, Childline has a beautifully 'child-friendly' area on the web site about bullying. 

But as a starting point, schools could begin by taking a completely objective child-like view during anti-bullying week and ask themselves "If I was a scared child, who would I tell?"  Much of my bullying occurred beyond the school day - so how are we able to work towards zero tolerance to bullying when children walk out of the school gates?  Do sports and extended school clubs on your school site adhere to the same anti-bullying policies?  Can we hold our heads up and say that as a whole community we are standing up against bullying from birth to grave? 

It is pure coincidence, but I challenged a man in a busy London street fairly recently for pushing a small child into a wall "To teach him a lesson" (his words; not mine) and I can say from experience that even as a 'grown-up' it can be incredibly scary standing up to a bully.  But I was shocked and angered by all the people who walked straight past.  What sort of society do we live in where people are too busy studying their own shoe laces to help a very young child who's been pushed in public that he's lying on the pavement in a busy London street?  Are people so de-sensitised by shocking storylines in soap operas that they can't comprehend when something actually happens under their own noses? And I wonder if it was in the back of anyone else's mind in the street that day - what happens to that little boy behind closed doors?

This is a rather pertinent question, because not only is research now indicating that a bullying parent often leads to a bullying child, sadly it also appears that there are very few programmes that will actively help an aggressive child learn to deal with their aggression.  Many schools, under pressure of budgets, time, work, class sizes and lack of local education authority and government support either ignore the problem (in which case it gets worse), punish the bully (in which case it gets worse), punish the target of bullying when they stand up for themselves (in which case it gets worse), or expel the bullying pupil (in which case the problem is passed to someone else).   All of these short-term, non-solutions do not address the cause of the problem and in all cases the bullying will get worse. It can result in the death of a pupil, either from suicide (at least 16 children commit suicide in the UK each year because they are being bullied at school), or from violence, as in the tragic case of Damilola Taylor (7 December 1989 – 27 November 2000) in Peckham, South London. 

So I am proud that at Portchester School our fantastic Connexions Personal Assistant shall shortly be piloting an extended services project working with the perpetrators of bullying.  Hopefully I shall be able to update you at the end of project evaluation about the effectiveness of this method of direct intervention.

Anti-Bullying Week 2010 kicked off in a spectacular manner with the Big March on Monday 15th November with the world’s first virtual protest march for children’s rights.  Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Alesha Dixon, Pixi Lott and Andrew Flintoff were among the famous names adding their support to the Beatbullying Big March that took place on Monday 15th November 2010.  It may be many years too late to prevent my miserable experience, but the Big March was a peaceful online protest calling on government to take action to protect children and young people from similar violence and harassment by their peers.  A useful sideline of the Beatbullying Big March is the excellent web site (shown as a screen dump below) with some equally excellent resources for teachers.  These resources include videos, lesson plans and ideas of how to get help in your school to beat bullying (such as cyber mentors). A full list of these excellent teaching resources can also be found located at the main Beat Bullying web site.

The little green avatar with a red bow is my mini-marcher!

Please keep me updated about any activities your school arranged for Anti-Bullying Week to add to our partnership news stories.  Also if any CAPP schools would like to implement any mentoring programmes, cyber-mentors, buddy schemes or programmes to deal with the perpetrators, but perhaps require a small amount of funding to make this happen then please get in touch. 

Also, if any of our schools or partners would like to borrow two fabulous DVD's :"Living with the Consequences" and "Too Precious to Waste" that have been written and produced by young people living in Leigh Park to raise awareness about the consequences of Alcohol and Arson, then please get in contact. The "Living with the Consequences" DVD comes supplied with a support pack and resources for delivering a whole teaching session, kindly supplied by the Leigh Park Community Improvement Partnership. 

I also still have some free resources (such as puzzles, posters and stress schools) if you are holding any conferences or partnership events over the coming months.  It would be a terrible shame to leave them in the box in my office; especially if they could be of use to any of our partners to promote extended services in these final stages. 

I have more news about our celebrated Ubuntu Project at Portchester Community School.  As well as being presented with a Community Safety Award in 2009 and appearing in the Portsmouth News, I am very proud that an article about our Ubuntu Project has made it into the Hampshire Children's Trust Connect Newsletter, so we can share our partnership's success across Hampshire.  I think you will all join me in saying thank you to Portchester School for agreeing to release these twelve students from their curriculum each week, and congratulations  for the fabulous achievement of the young people who have taken part in the project over the past two years. A special thank you goes out to the partners who worked incredibly hard to made this project happen each week.  Please follow the link below to read the foreword by John Coghlan (Director of Children's Services) and a link to this very informative newsletter:

Connect Newsletter

As many of our two clusters are Rights, Respect and Responsibilities Award schools, I am sure you will not miss Universal Children's Day on 20th November 2010. This special day started in 1959 when all the nations of the world, the United Nations, adopted the declaration of the rights of the child.  The creation of Universal Children's Day reflects upon the growing recognition that children are important and valued members of society, now and in the future. Universal Children's Day celebrates children just for being themselves. It reminds us that children need love and respect to grow to their full potential. It is a day to listen to children, to marvel at their uniqueness and all they have to offer.

Now unfortunately this year Universal Children's Day falls on a Saturday, but please feel free to use some of the wonderful global awareness teaching resources by following the links below.

Universal Children's Day Assembly      The Paper Bag Game      Christian Aid Global Teaching Resources 

Primary schools may also be interested in a fabulous new web site has been created to address an existing gap in mental health and wellbeing education for primary school children.  It is designed promote the development of coping skills and combat mental health stigma by raising awareness about what actually happens in a therapy session and how common emotional difficulties are. 

I must say that is far easier than uploading posters onto my news page on this web site, but I shall endeavour to do both when time allows. However the advertising poster with our networking site addresses is now available for you below to promote through your networks:

Fareham Extended Services Social Networking Advertising Poster

I don't know how many of you have been glued to the TV each night to watch 'Dr' Gillian Mc Keith undergoing yet another round of humiliation in the bush-tucker trials in "I'm A Celebrity- Get Me Out Of Here"?  Well, I hope you don't think badly of me, because I almost fell off my chair laughing when Gillian fell into a fake faint.  I've seen plenty of people faint and they never usually brush their hair out of their eyes and fall down in such an elegant heap.  But I was most surprised to read was that Gillian Mc Keith is the same age as the gorgeous, beautiful and voluptuous Nigella Lawson!!!! 

Which just goes to prove that if you are what you eat then you can stuff the sunflower seeds - I'm sticking to *gooey chocolate cake!!! So I'm off to buy cake now, so until I return to my blog duties in December, please sit back and enjoy Brett Domino's entertaining song:

&

* Sadly gooey chocolate cake has a nasty habit of sticking right back (usually on my thighs!!!!)