Neither victims nor offenders. An educational approach against bullying

Iannacone N.

La Meridiana

Italian

English

Prevention – self-awareness – role play – strategies – irrational behaviour

Book

Teachers.

21 - 100 pages

The text is divided into three parts: the first part deals with the bullying phenomenon in relation to the modern social archetypes and to the class management. The second part includes a series of practical activities that - starting from self-awareness – use plays and group discussions to work out and share models of different social contexts.The third part is based on enclosed documents which are necessary to carry out preventive strategies: animal cards, the distinctive features of victims and bullies, frequently asked questions. The writer started dealing with bullying collaborating in a translation and in the Italian exhibition “Male and female bullies. Neither victims nor offender” of the project Bambino Urbano del Comune di Milano (Urban Child in the city of Milan). The exhibition was one of the first initiatives on national scale that stressed the importance of preventive strategies and the creation of a target group (the audience), in relation to the psychological, social and educational trend that aimed at reinforcing the learning of socio-emotional skills in communicative situations at school. This work starts from this sort of experience and it considers the possibility to transfer the playful scenario into school classes in order to achieve three important objectives for the learning of socio-emotional skills, such as- to learn the features and the rules of communication- to activate an auto-evaluation process, giving him/herself the predominant feature- to be aware of how these characteristics can be found in the specific contexts and how they could affect people’s behavior in case of change.The report is a valid support that can be put into the “tool case” that teachers have at their disposal, to face the problem of offences and crimes occurred at school or to enrich the curriculum with playful strategies and consequently to develop socio-emotional skills and life skills in general, not only as preventive strategies, but also to promote a more profitable coexistence at school.

Many people say “bullying is an old issue. This phenomenon has always existed". It may be true, but the wounds caused by bullying are pretty serious. Today we are more aware of this phenomenon. It is a good step forward. The attention to this phenomenon is good, to prevent every action from being considered bullying. If we want to know the meaning and the prevention strategies we need to have a specific knowledge and ability that we cannot find in common reality. We need to acquire socio-emotional abilities and life skills in general not only as prevention strategy, but also to promote the well being and the acceptable coexistence at school. This is the aim of the book. The activity starts from the distinctive features of 10 animals, in order to offer children and guys the possibility to experience the own social communication skills towards him/herself and towards other people in topic interactive situations. Each animal corresponds to a specific socio emotional skill and this ability must be analyzed and studied. This suggestion is useful not only to face the problem of crimes and offences in class but also to consider how crucial playful strategies are if you want to know something more of emotional contexts. The bullying phenomenon is an example.

Don Milani