Conversation Around Bullying

In order to effectively teach advocacy around bullying to first graders, it is imperative that students understand the power of teamwork and empathy. Teamwork is an important skill to have to know how to work with others, listen to their ideas and voice ideas of one's own. Empathy is an important skill to have in order to understand how people are feeling, read social ques, and be able to support peers and colleagues effectively to help them achieve their goals and progress in a variety of ways. After students have a deeper understanding of teamwork and empathy, students will be more impactful in being socially responsible citizens of the world around them (Shapiro, 2011; Social Responsibility Competency Profiles, n.d.)

The lessons around bullying teach students how they can work together with their peers to show empathy and compassion to students who are being bullied as well as how to stand up to a bully to advocate for yourself and others. Throughout the lessons, students will engage with diverse texts to show examples of bullying and analyze how the characters chose to respond. The length of the conversation portion of the advocacy plan is six days. The lessons will occur after the initial advocacy lesson where students learn what advocacy means and how to use their voice to create positive change within their school and community.

Throughout our bullying unit students had multiple opportunities to read and watch videos about a character who was bullied and how they chose to stand up for themselves and how the characters friends chose to respond to the bully. Each of the books and videos provides students with multiple strategies on how to find their strength, confidence and voice to be an advocate for positive change. Many of these books are found within the first grade read aloud curriculum. Additional books and videos were added during the research process to help facilitate effective discussions around inclusion, kindness and leadership.

Seen below are student work samples from the first lesson around bullying in which students read the book A Bad Case of Stripes by David Shannon. In the book, the main character Camilla is bullied because she looks different from her classmates. She is a self-conscious character who cares about what others think of her and her insecurities present themselves when she is treated unfairly by her classmates. Students were asked to identify how Camilla feels when she is being bullied by her peers. Students were asked to use specific text evidence to support their answers. This is a skills we are continual practicing throughout the first grade curriculum.

Seen below are student work samples from the second lesson around bullying in which students read the book Enemy Pie by Derek Munson. In the book, the main character conveys his feelings about his new neighbor, Jeremy Ross. The main character does not like Jeremy Ross because he had been bullied and excluded by him. Because of Jeremy Ross's unkind behavior, the main character considered him an enemy. In the student work (seen below) students had been asked to define the word enemy.

The conversation portion of our advocacy project took place after students had read, watched and analyzed the books videos seen above. Students engaged in a round table to answer questions around bullying and advocacy. The questions presented by the teacher were:

1. Have you been bullied before? How did it make you feel?

2. Why is it important to stand up to a bully?

3. How do the characters in the books we read and videos we watched stand up to bullies?

4. What are different strategies we can use to stand up to bullies?

Students were given think time in order to answer the questions to the fullest with as much detail as possible. Each student was given an opportunity to engage in the conversation and add on to students experiences, feelings, ideas and solutions. The conversation portion of the lesson was administered whole group with the majority of students wanting to contribute their personal experiences, analysis of the text and videos and solutions to the problem. This allowed students to participate in higher order thinking, such as evaluating and creating, in order to understanding bullying on a personal level and contribute solutions on how first graders can use their voice to stop bullying from taking place in the classroom. After the conversational portion of the lesson, students were able to come up with our own classroom solutions on how we could effectively stand up to a bully. Below are a few student sample answers from the dialogue portion of the lesson.

The final portion of the conversational piece of the lesson concluded with students responses and solutions on how they could personally stand up to a bully. The first three solutions show how students can independently address the problem in hopes of stopping the mean behavior. The final solution, tell a trustworthy adult, shows how students can use their voice and express their feelings to a teacher or adult who can continue to advocate for them and help them solve the problem. The final solution displays the teamwork portion around advocacy. These solutions were created by students in my first grade class and were discussed whole-group to analyze if they would be effective or ineffective when standing up to a bully.

The most exciting part of the conversational portion of our advocacy lesson was watching, hearing and seeing students passion around this topic translate into actionable solutions to address the problem. Students took ownership over their learning to think deeply about bullying and effective ways to stop a bully. It helped that our classroom environment had already been established as a safe space for students to express their ideas, feelings and beliefs. Ultimately, because students feel their classroom is a safe space, we were able to collaborate on a deeper level to create solutions that would benefit all students in our classroom. Now that my first grade class has a greater understanding on how to identify a bully and solutions to stop the mean behavior, we can now transition our discussions to focus on inclusivity and kindness. My hope is for our advocacy work within first grade to continue around these deeper concepts in order to recognize, value and respect cultural, personality, behavioral and academic differences within students.