Bullying and Intervention to it

I watched an interesting programme on Yle Teema (A Finnish tv channel) yesterday about bullying in schools and how a school in Norway had tackled that problem. It was really good! They had started using Erling Roland's methods to tackle bullying. And truly all the children and the school community seemed a lot happier there! The involvement of parents and everyone sounded very good. They have zero tolerance at the school for bullying. They encourage the pupils (and parents) to tell of anything they see. And it is not labelled as tale-telling. They create an atmosphere where everyone feels they can speak up/speak out and bring forth how they feel and experience things. The adults are more involved in the children's world during break times. They mix older kids with younger ones, so the younger ones can rely on older kids and older pupils know they are needed. They want everyone to know they are important and valued.


Also, they have a rule that there is no excluding of anyone. Everyone is to be included in games in the yard for example. It is not allowed to not include someone, take someone with you. Kaikki tulee ottaa leikkiin mukaan.


When I was watching this I could not help but think about Church(es) and how those communities function in general. Or could be work places. Any human communities. In these places sometimes the school rules could still abide! I thought the communication aspect was awesome. In the small girl's groups everyone could share how they felt and how certain behaviour by other people made them feel. It was important to communicate! That way we can learn to understand and learn ways to work/communicate together. Everyone's feeling and thoughts were important and valued and listened to. (This doesn't mean in general I think that whenever someone says "i don't like that" you go and please them and do as they want - but communication gives a basis for understanding and compromises, being heard and listened to is healing and important.)

You can watch it in here: Opettaja.tv


It's in English/Norwegian with Finnish subtitles. 27 minutes.

Bullying in Schools: How successful interventions can be? (Erling Roland co-author of article)