Encouraging Positive Behaviour

Recently I've been reflecting on some of the media attention that was focussed last term on the issue of bullying. This was the result of some rather nasty stuff that happened in the north island. You may have noticed some of this discussion. I agree with our Minister of Education's statement:

"...bullying does not occur solely on school grounds, but I do believe that schools have a leadership role to play in their communities on this issue." [stuff.co.nz 5 May]

We want everyone to be safe at our school and we take this issue extremely seriously. In fact, all schools in New Zealand are charged with ensuring a safe physical and emotional environment for children and staff (refer to National Administration Guidelines 5 for further reading). It is timely to remind you of some of the key messages relating to this:

What is bullying? Bullying is ongoing persistent behaviour that is negative towards another person or people. It can be verbal, physical, emotional and includes digital communication such as email/chat. While it can lead from a one-off interaction, it is generally negative behaviour that is ongoing or continuous.

How do we help children cope if it occurs? Children are coached in a range of ways to effectively deal with issues as they arise. We ask children to report negative behaviours they can't deal with themselves to a safe adult. We support students (and family if need be) in the most appropriate way and this could happen in a wide range of ways following our discipline policy. As part of our curriculum we teach Kia Kaha and Keeping Ourselves Safe programmes alternate years which allow us to explore these issues in depth to empower children to deal with them in positive and healthy ways.

How can parents/family help with this? We ask parents to reassure children to tell a safe adult as soon as possible so action can be taken to ensure their child is safe. We encourage families to use our school values of Respect and Responsibility when dealing with issues such as these. As always, if you have concerns please come and speak to us so we can help resolve them with you.

As an aside, when doing some background reading about bullying, I discovered that the word 'bullying' actually used to mean sweetheart! Who would have thought that!!

I think teaching our children to be resilient, confident and assertive when faced with adversity is really crucial in helping them learn to effectively deal with problems. It is also an important part of growing up and becoming independent and mature. This ties in with our goal for student learning for children to be self-directed learners as well as being prepared for the future (these are two elements of our vision for student learning). This secondary student is someone who epitomises taking positive action on this issue.

Here is our school procedure relating to bullying, it includes links to our behaviour management procedure and other useful references.

What do you think? Feel free to send us your views or make comments on this blog post.

Here are some good links I've come across relating to bullying. They include books, web sites, downloads and more.

Being safe, responsible and ethical

During our recent Web Safety Seminar Dean Stewart from Web Safety NZ Ltd talked about three major areas of concern with the internet:

1. Content - the sorts of information our young people can access has changed dramatically and it is much more readily available. Due to technology changing so rapidly, the variety and types of content available has increased dramatically. At school we use lots of different types of content to engage children in their learning, from blogs, to photos and video. This is just a start in this exciting area at Burnham School.
2. Contact - this idea relates to who children have contact with, or who is able to make contact with our children. At school we don't allow children to make contact with anyone on the internet (ie. other schools, parents, organisations) without direct teacher supervision. We teach children to be very careful about what personal information they share. We suggest you encourage children to only ever allow themselves to be 'friends' with people they already know in person. Dean suggests that if your child has a Facebook account, then YOU should also have a Facebook account as their parent AND be connected to them as a friend. Children are only allowed to have a Facebook account when they are 13 years of age.
3. Conduct - the range of activities that we can take part in online has grown significantly. People can chat, email, IM, brainstorm, video, audio conference, just to name a few! Mobile devices will change the way that people interact with the internet and the number of ways to interact is increasing all the time. At school we encourage children to be ethical and responsible in their communication. This means that children need to be taught that how they interact when online is equally important to how they interact when they are face to face with other people. 

Further to the point about conduct, it is important we model that being ethical means never using digital means to deal with problems - ie. we model speaking to the person concerned first. We believe this is really important and that all problems are best solved by talking to the right person, in the right forum. Our procedures for dealing with issues reinforce this concept.

For further reading about what we do at school check our Web Safety Tips page above.

Assembly Item - Respect

Today in assembly we talked about respect - what does it mean to be respectful? There were three questions that Rob asked people to consider:

1. What does it mean to be respectful?
2. When is it difficult to be respectful?
3. What do you do when you see someone being disrespectful?

Classes over the next couple of days will be discussing these questions and coming up with their own ideas.

Let's celebrate our amazing teachers

This Friday 30th October is a very special day. It is World Teachers Day! On this day, all students, support staff, families and communities are encouraged to celebrate the vital and important role that teachers play in society.

It is timely to reflect on the power of a great teacher and what they contribute to both your child(ren) but also to society in general. Teachers contribute in powerful ways to the development of children and help shape them, along with the family, to become the people and citizens of tomorrow. The influence and importance of our teachers cannot be understated, it is teachers who make the difference in schools.

Of course the job of a teacher is easier with support from home, when home and school are working in partnership to enhance the learning of our children.

Please do something to acknowledge your teachers - this could be a small gift or comment or something more significant. If you have a positive comment to make about your teacher you may want to share it as a comment to this blog post.


For more information about World Teachers Day visit this web page...