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In the weekly cut and jib of any school there will inevitably be, as you might expect, incidences of bullying. This goes with the territory of dealing with children, some of whom try to exert their rights at the expense of others'. As school leaders, we deal with everything we know about, whether we are told about them or whether we discover them for ourselves. Even when we are told, we generally try to engineer it so that the children think we have discovered it. That is one of the most insidious things about bullying: it thrives in a climate of secrecy. Break that and you break the bullying - nearly always true.
One thing we do not do in my Primary School, though a few parents recently have advised me that we should, is the whole notion of a generally applied "zero tolerance" approach. When a child bullies another and we discover in our investigations some underlying reasons for his/her behaviour, we tend to consider that for them and try as best we can to show compassion for the bully as well as concern for the bullied. While we would always apply a zero tolerance approach when we believe that other people's safety is at risk, we do not have a list of crimes and their corresponding objective punishments.
Certainly a child who is acting up in class, misbehaving on the playground, showing disrespect to the bus staff and so forth, needs to have that behaviour addressed with them and we always do that. When we know. But when we also know that that child is, for example, currently caught in the middle of an acrimonious divorce or is anxious about a very ill parent, of course we must take that into account. We are very effective in how we deal with these issues and we have had some great success stories.
We do not fool ourselves into thinking that every child in our school right now is as happy as a clam–we always worry most about what we don't know is happening. Parents should let schools in on any concerns they might have for their own children, even if that amounts merely to a gut feeling that something is not quite right. There is a lot schools can achieve when we are aware of a potential issue. And when we need to apply consequences from time to time, we are not shy about doing that. But the purpose of them must always be rehabilitative - anything less would be unforgivable.
Zero tolerance is possible only in the presence of zero discretion, zero compassion and zero perspective.
Have a restful weekend.
Brian
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