AIM
- To agree how everyone’s right to be treated with respect can become part of the school ethos.
- To see how far this right is already reflected in the school’s anti-bullying policy.
Copies of activity sheets available as .pdfs below; copies of school’s antibullying policy; blackboard or flip chart.
Download 'That's Harassment'
Download 'The Bigger Picture'Teaching Points
Since 1999 headteachers have had a specific obligation to take measures to prevent all forms of bullying amongst pupils as part of the school’s discipline and behaviour policy, and to bring the measures to the attention of all pupils, staff and parents at least once a year. It is now widely accepted that the most effective anti-bullying policies are constructed with input from students. This lesson provides an opportunity for year 7 students to be part of that process, and to ensure that the complex issues of gender harassment and homophobic bullying are visible in the policy. The timings are approximate and will depend on the group.
If time is limited:
- Step 3 may be omitted or used as extension work.
- The italicised section of step 2 may also be omitted.
Step One: Introduction 5 min
- Explain the lesson aims and write them on the board for reference.
- Recall the ground rules agreed during the first lesson.
- Ask the students to recall what harassment is, and to give examples of it.
- Write these on the board.
- Explain that there has been a lot of publicity about bullying in schools, but that it is not new, or limited to the state education system. Being bullied does not mean that you are less good than the people who bully you, although that is what they want you to think.
- Sir Ranulph Fiennes, who trekked across Antarctica in 1992–3 was bullied mercilessly at Eton in the 1950s, and has written about the experience: “No leper or spy can have suffered so long or so sharply as I did as I struggled to live cheek-by-jowl twenty four hours a day for two years with the shouted taunts and the subtle cruelties of my fellow Etonians…crying hopelessly at nights, I contemplated the option of suicide withgrowing seriousness…’
- ?Who do the students think was responsible for his desperate situation?
- Divide the students into groups of 4 and give each group one of the situation cards on activity sheet 1, That’s harassment.
- Ask them to read through the situation on the card and answer the four questions. Do they think the situation on the card could happen in their school?
- Join the groups with another group that worked on a different card.
- Ask each group to present their situation and their answers to the other group. Although the situations were different, did they find any common solutions?
- Write the names of the victims of the 4 case studies on the board (Katy, Kylie, Josh, Ana).
- Ask the students who worked on each case study to feed back on what they thought the person felt, why the other students were acting in that way, what could have been done to prevent it happening and what could be done to change it. Note their responses on the board, putting a star by any response every time it is repeated.
- Give the students 5 minutes working with the person next to them to look at activity sheet 2, The bigger picture.
- What does the information on the sheet make them think about ways to prevent bullying and harassment? (that if it is not acceptable in the workplace, it should not be tolerated in school; that a major part in preventing this kind of behaviour is visible implementation of the policy).
- What does it suggest about girls’ bullying? (that school anti-bullying policies often fail to address less physical forms of bullying).
- How you conduct this section of the lesson will depend on the format and accessibility of the school anti-bullying policy.
- Your aim should be to get the groups of students to look at the policy and compare its contents with their recommendations (still on the board) in response to the earlier case studies.
- Ask each group to come up with one recommendation in relation to the content or the current use of the policy which would make it work more effectively against harassment.
- Allow each group to feed back their recommendation to the class.
- Ask the students to vote for the 3 recommendations they would like to see taken up.
- How will they carry this forward? (Is there a school’s council? Should they approach the Head of Year? What structures exist to make their views known?
- How will they implement the recommendations within their own year group?
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