How to build an effective anti-bullying school community

To support anti-bullying week 2023 we’re sharing three great online resources enabling students to develop the skills needed to build an anti-bullying educational community. These skills are:

• Social problem-solving
• Assertiveness
• Empathy

1. Social problem-solving skills at Big Life Journal

This great resource from Big Life Journal helps us to:

• Teach children the skills they need to solve problems
• Teach social problem-solving skills directly related to verbal, physical, and indirect bullying
• Help children understand and manage their feelings with the support of co-regulation embedding self-regulation
• Encourage impulse control and self-calming
• Help children practice listening skills
• Practice finding solutions, anticipating consequences, and evaluating the harmfulness of violent solutions
• Help children understand everyone is different which is something to be respected, not made fun of or simply tolerated

2. Assertiveness skills at KidsHealth

This valuable site enables us to teach children in an inclusive way to:

• Ask for and offer things to each other in a polite and open-ended way
• Use assertiveness skills to avoid coercive behaviours, such as bullying, passive aggressive tactics, overt control and discriminatory acts
• Ignore routine provocative peer behaviours, such as ‘banter’
• Use assertiveness skills to meet their goals

3. Empathy skills at Big Life Journal

This can aid School Leaders' understanding of empathy, and help us to:

• Encourage children to label their feelings and tell each other how they feel about bullying
• Discuss how children who are bullied might feel
• Explain that despite differences between people, everyone experiences certain basic feelings
• Remind children how they felt in situations like those faced by others in distress
• Model empathy by talking about how you identify another’s distress and think of ways to help

Together we can use resources like these to equip children with strengthened skills around empathy, assertiveness and problem-solving, making for a fortified anti-bullying school community!