Kindergartners read the book Hands are Not for Hitting by Martine Agassi. We used this book to introduce to bullying behavior and identify bullying. Students learned many ways to use their hands (helping, doing, drawing, building, communicating) to develop healthy relationships but not to use their hands to hit others.
First Graders read the book Bullies Never Win by Margery Cuyler. Students identified the negative feelings and emotions that bullying causes in others. Students identified ways to stop bullying if they see it. Students also discussed how to be a good friend rather than how to be a bully--focusing on using Habit 1: Be Proactive and being in charge of their actions and how they treat others, and Habit 5: Seek First to Understand and then to be Understood to identify with the feelings of others.
In Second grade students learned about how Seek First to Understand and then to be Understood helps develop empathy. Empathy is taking a walk in another person's shoes and seeking to understand how that person feels before making a choice of how to talk to or treat someone. If students develop empathy by using Habit 5 they will likely make the decision not to bully others as well as stand up to bullying when they see it happening to other people. Students read the book The Bully Blocker's Club by Teresa Bateman and identified Habit 5 and Habit 6, Synergize, in the book and discussed how these habits helped the characters stop bulling in their school.
In
Fifth grade students viewed an interactive power point to review bullying and we discussed in detail cyber-bullying. Students discussed how Habit 5 can help students stop bullying when they see it. By Seeking First to Understand someone, we can think of how it would
feel to be them or in their situation and that would drive how we decide to
treat them or talk to them, and we can use this to stop and stand up to
bullying. Students also watched the bullying video "Gum in My Hair."
In sixth grade, students participated in an activity called "What Are You Carrying Around?" One student volunteered to wear a backpack with bricks in it through the lesson. During the lesson the class viewed different pictures and discussed in small groups what they believed was happening in the picture, the different feelings the individuals in the picture had, etc. Then students were shown the complete picture and given the information regarding what was really happening. We used this as a way to discuss what empathy is: when you have the whole story of someone's life you can understand what they are going through and you might choose to treat them differently. At the end of the lesson I checked with the student volunteer who was holding the backpack through the lesson. As a class we brainstormed various things that 6th graders might "carry in their backpack" such as friendship problems, problems at home, homework, stress, anxiety, pressure to do well, pressure to be popular. We discussed how all of this stress (and literally the backpack with bricks) feels heavier and more burdensome overtime. Then I placed a brick labeled "bullying" in the backpack and we talked about how if we knew what others were carrying in their backpack we might choose not to add to their stress the weight that bullying carries.
