Bullying and OST

[Rose Tassone]

Hello everyone. I'm wishing to share my experience of facilitating OST for
the first time. It was held in a primary school in Perth, Western Australia.
Surveys administered by the principal earlier in the year had parents and
students report that they were most concerned about bullying at this school.
The principal identified the question "What do we need to do to respect each
other and get along?' 73 students, ages 8 to 12, 6 educators and 3 parents
accepted the invitation.

 

This is what I observed during the OS event: A student was pushed out of her
group when she went to the breakout space even though she was the one who
had initiated the topic; students were physically fighting, pushing each
other and name calling; students who were being butterflies chose to run
around, disrupt and tease those in the groups even though there was a
drawing activity available to them; the groups tended to compete with each
other on how many pages they could fill with lists of dos and don'ts of how
to treat each other.  The energy of the morning was one of palpable violence
and two students were suspended.  Teachers who had been briefed by the
principal to allow chaos at the event, so that children could self organise,
finally had to intervene because of duty of care issues.

 

Looking through the Book of Proceedings the students appear to have all the
knowledge of how to respect each other and get along, though their behaviour
during the event did not depict this. At the debriefing the principal
mentioned that the behaviours that were shown are what normally occur every
day in the schoolyard as they self organise around individual survival.  So
it appears that the proverbial 'Lucy' is more than likely a 10 year old
bully!

 

I would really appreciate any comments and/or thoughts.

 

Kindest regards

Rose Tassone

 

 

m:   (+61) 0408 944 072

e:    rosetassone at iinet.net.au

p:    po box 358 leederville wa 6903

 

 

 


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