Welcome to Aim for Success. We invite you to explore our site and find an array of mental health tools and resources for you and your family.

Bullying

What Is Bullying?

Many children have a good idea of what bullying is because they see it every day! Bullying happens when someone hurts or scares another person on purpose and the person being bullied has a hard time defending themselves. So, everyone needs to get involved to help stop it.

Bullying is wrong! It is behaviour that makes the person being bullied feel afraid or uncomfortable. There are many ways that young people bully each other, even if they don't realize it at the time. Some of these include:

Punching, shoving and other acts that hurt people physically
Spreading bad rumours about people
Keeping certain people out of a group
Teasing people in a mean way
Getting certain people to "gang up" on others
The four most common types of bullying are:

Verbal bullying - name-calling, sarcasm, teasing, spreading rumours, threatening, making negative references to one's culture, ethnicity, race, religion, gender, or sexual orientation, unwanted sexual comments.

Social Bullying - mobbing, scapegoating, excluding others from a group, humiliating others with public gestures or graffiti intended to put others down.

Physical Bullying - hitting, poking, pinching, chasing, shoving, coercing, destroying or stealing belongings, unwanted sexual touching.

Cyber Bullying - using the internet or text messaging to intimidate, put-down, spread rumours or make fun of someone.

Bullying Prevention

Throughout the year Aim for Success helps to promote positive relationships, teach conflict management skills and deliver programs that directly address bullying, all within schools based settings and using evidence based models..

Conflict Resolution in Schools

Aim for Success has successfully worked with school staff and administration in resolving conflicts that were both one-off situations and bullying situations.

Some of the Aim for Success team have been trained in Alberta Conflict Transformation Society Restorative Practices. Staff have applied Restorative Practices and the Circle format to form the basis of multiple programs.

Peace Circles are available to classes in each of our schools at the request of the teacher and focus on conflict resolution. Classroom Circles take elements of the Life Skills and Health curriculum and incorporate them into a circle format.

By allowing students the opportunity to express themselves, whether about a case of bullying or about how to say “no”, they own the experience as well as the outcomes. In both cases students are made to feel as important partners in their own learning and part of their solutions.

Prevention

Programs such as Second step, The Fourth R, The Council for Boys and Young Men and the Girls Circle all address social emotional learning and develop strong interpersonal skills. These programs are delivered within schools and to universal grade specific students. On average we have around 1250 students a year complete the above mentioned programs. Using evidence based models; these programs help students to address the core underlying issues of anxiety, conflict and negative peer interactions

Page updated

Report abuse