This week, PCCS is having an Anti-Bullying week where we focus on what bullying is and how we can prevent it in our classroom and throughout the school. Both blog entries this week will be about what we have been doing in the classroom. Today’s entry will be all about what we did on Monday and Tuesday!
On Monday, we kicked off the Anti-Bullying week by reading a new biography by Brad Meltzer – I am Gandhi. We learned that Gandhi used truth and nonviolence to battle some of the wrongs that were happening to people in South Africa and to help win India’s independence from Great Britain. We learned that even though he might have gotten angry, he used his words and his actions…not his fists…to battle injustice. The saying from the book was “In a gentle way, I will shake the world.” We also found another lesson we could learn from Gandhi was to make peace. We then discussed what we could do as individuals to make peace in the school. We felt if we could make peace, bullying would not happen. To help communicate this, we created posters either by ourselves or with a partner focusing in on what we thought was a good way to make peace.
On Tuesday, we read the book Juice Box Bully. This picture book showed a story about how a new student came to a classroom and was being mean and starting to bully people, but the class had made a promise to each other that they would not be bystanders and would stand up to others that were doing the wrong thing. This led to a great discussion about what is bullying, what is being mean, and what is teasing. We focused in on what is good or bad teasing, as well. If both people are laughing…and it stops when someone asks it to stop, we felt it was okay. However, if only the teaser was laughing, and it does not stop when asked, then we knew it was bad teasing and starting to move toward being mean..which could lead to bullying. We will be working more with this over the next few days.