Bullying behaviours, perpetrated through a virtual or a face-to-face interaction, have massive negative impacts on people, being them victims, survivors, or the bullies themselves. The aim of this course is to learn about effective ways to prevent all forms of bullying in education and school settings. The new edition of the course “How to stop bullying and cyberbullying in schools and promote social emotional learning” took place in Bologna from 29/01/2023 to 04/02/2023. This time, all participants came from Spain, with Antonio, Francisca and Marga from the Colegio Juan de la Cierva. We started with our introduction day where we brainstormed all the different kinds of bullying: how does the behaviour manifest itself? According to the bullying cycle, which role does every participant interprets in a standard scenario? Which are the three main elements distinguishing bullying from conflict? Every “student” was asked to define in three points his idea of conflict. Then, they shared with each other what they had written down as to give shape to different types of situations. We moved on to focus on the victim: which are the main risk factors that lead children to be bullied? And what can we do to prevent this situation? What are the initiatives that we can conceive and carry out in order to prevent bullying behaviours? We looked at these topics through 4 different points of view: family, school, individual and community. One of the most spread types of bullying to be eradicated, since subtle but lethal in its effects, is cyberbullying. Nowadays Internet plays a major role in the lives of our kids and may have disparate, contrasting degrees of influence on them. Nonetheless, it presents some positive sides: interconnection endures as the best way to communicate with a large audience and foster discussion on a nearly public level. With some practical activities we explored the world of cyber bullying. In particular, we reflected on the differences between traditional and cyber bullying and about the things that they have in common. As to understand and put ourselves in the shoes of bullying victims we implemented a very powerful activity which can be used both with students, parents and teachers to raise awareness: everyone in the class created an all-new Facebook profile, made up entirely through their imagination. After that, the other people initially commented photos and info the others decided to publish; a second wave of comments were determined by an assigned role, based on the bullying cycle previously studied. In order to prevent bullying behaviours it is vital to foster a positive classroom environment. This is why we explored the topics of emotional intelligence, membership and inclusion and collaboration. These are pillars for a supportive classroom and should not be underestimated. Divided in groups, participants had to connect the basic skills of a strong and cooperative team with their definitions. Of course, we discussed about this with a lot of non-formal and creative activities and games, thanks to which it was impossible to get bored ;) Discover more about this course here |
Welcome to the ELA Blog. Here you will find articles and photos of our courses and have a look at the topics addressed during the week in Bologna, Palermo and Tenerife. You will also have the chance to take a peek at our projects and check out what we have been up to.
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