Two days until the National Day of Action and we are not quite ready!

In two days time, the Primary School I have been working with is going to have a 15 minute assembly for the whole school to introduce the Grade 4’s campaign for the Lets Stand Together - National Day of Action Against Bullying and Violence. Then the Grade 4's will be running sessions for each grade.

In the space of 4 weeks we have created a campaign board in the corridor and two different lesson plans  - one for the older kids, and one for the younger. Our slogan is:

Stand up for Friend CHIPS!

Caring - Helpful - Include  - Positiveness  - Smile 

For the last four Tuesday afternoons Sam, the Principal,  and I have worked with the Grade 4 cohort on this project, drawing them out of their usual classes. Although we had a sense of what we wanted to cover, the material has very much been emergent. We have listened to what has come out of the student concerns,  their suggestions and their misbehaviours!  We have learnt a lot about what is important to them, how they frame what can go wrong in relationships and how they see solutions. 

The project has had the following stages:

LESSON 1 - Orientation

Valuing the positive - What makes friendship?  Sam showed some up-beat music videos about friendship as an opener asking students to reflect on what makes friendship.

What do you do or how do you talk to friends? Sam put students into pairs of one girl and boy and they worked together to create wonderful posters of friends talking or doing things. 

When students did a world café style rotation around the class to value-add  each other’s drawings a couple of kids drew or wrote inappropriate things. This provided material to look at the feelings of the students affected (shocked, disgusted, sad) and for me to reflect on how to model the restorative approach I would like students to be able to take.

Framing up the project – Grade 4’s leading a program for the whole school around building good relationships. We told them that there was an opportunity for what they developed to also be used nationally. Students very excited,  in particular in running lessons for the GRADE 6’s!.

LESSON 2 - Tuning into Issues

Community of Practice guidelines – How will we work together on a sensitive issue? students brainstorm and I add privacy and right to pass.

Tuning into feelings – dramatic exercises. 

This went completely pear-shaped – students not sticking to their assigned groups, moving to friendship ones, then changing again, some students without a group, then being silly, loud, not listening, being rude. I then used  “I messages” about feelings – “I am not happy, I am shocked at this behaviour – let’s sit quietly and remember we are here to explore how to build good relationships… ” It provided a wonderful segue into the next bit. Later I reflected on whether this showed the natural habitat of fraught friendship relationships – like musical chairs, in this game there will always be students without friends standing alone.

What do we hope for? – How can we build good relationships when things go wrong? What does each person hope for to get a good outcome?

This was the BIG IDEA to get the sense that we need to have good outcomes for everyone. Using the example of people writing inappropriate things on others’  drawings, students came up with a list of what they would hope for if they were harmed, and if they were the one who did harm. This was a serious and thoughtful discussion where students shared times when they had done things wrong and how they felt and what they wanted for it to feel right. I thought this was the pearl of learning.

What do we hope for when things go wrong? 

The person who has been harmed in some way hopes for:

I would like honesty by the person who did the harmful thing – I would feel better if they owned up 

If I don’t know who did it, I would like to find out – there should be an investigation 

I would like the person who did it to say that they won’t do it again 

There should be a consequence for the person who did it

 The person who may have caused harm hopes for:

I don’t want to be blamed, I don’t want to get into trouble

If I wasn’t aware that I caused harm, then I would like to be told – so I know

 I would like an opportunity to explain, to apologise, to fix it.

I would like help by others when it is too hard to fix, especially when I feel sick and worried and can’t see what to do. 

I would like to feel that people like me again

Naming the issues - Brainstorm what can wrong for relationships such as sister/brother, teacher/student, friends, teams, parent/child, peers. 

The students created a very interesting list of issues which you can see here. Bullying came out several times, and habitual fighting a major one in families.

What are you personally concerned about? Write a personal letter of concern to the Grand Pooh Bah unicorn of Wiseness. (a puppet) 

I was keen to get some indicator of their concerns and issues so this could be a basis to work from.  I thought also these would provide a useful resource for parent discussion. There were some very thoughtful and empathic letters and some silly ones. Even though we had considered a variety of relationships and issues that could go wrong,  at least half the students wrote of problems with friendship. There was only one letter specifically about bullying. Sam and I then used these letters (and their indicator of emotional maturity)  to decide how to allocate the students to the two groups to work with the different grades.

What students were concerned about:

Breakdown of a friendship group – people fighting or upset. Not a happy place to be. Being right in the middle of it. Confusion over whose side to take. Wanting to get things back to how they used to be.

Feeling left out – no one cares for me. Being excluded from activities. Trying to make friends. Wondering if something is wrong with me. Wanting to have a friend I can trust for life.

Bullying – having constant fear it could happen again. Wanting to feel safe and no need to think about it.

Friends moving away – feeling sad, hoping they still think of you. Wanting to see them and connect with them again.

Being concerned for a friend who is acting different  - is something wrong? What can I do to help?

Reputation – how others see me – Doing something wrong in front of people and having them think you are horrible, even when you have put it right. Wanting forgiveness and to be seen as a nice person. To feel normal again.

TRIBES reflection- students held the unicorn puppet and reflected on what they had learnt. Some very thoughtful things. Some students passing and then asking for the unicorn back.

LESSON 3 – Coming up with Ideas – Student ownership

Brainstorming ideas  for the campaign - Sam was keen for a whole school activity that encouraged people to be positive and say something positive about others. The students brainstormed ways to make this work. The students also brainstormed some general ideas for the lessons - Gender balance in presenters, mix groups so not friendship, read book, scenario for bullying. We then broke  into two groups and let students explore possibilities.  (Logos, games, reading a story, dramatic scenes.) 

My group spent some time in a committee meeting format brainstorming how they could create a dodge it ball game with mean red balls and positive white balls, each person building on another in a very excited way.  This seemed like a completely different group to before – appreciative of the opportunity to come up with their own thing. It started running around in circles a bit so I suggested we have a break and then ran a couple of dramatic milling exercises (look at someone and smile, look away, discuss how that made you feel) and some freeze frames. 

One boy then asked if they could work in friendship groups to come up with their own skits. “Sue, it would go a lot better if you didn’t try to direct us and just let us come up with something in our friendship groups.” The students put on their skits to each other. In a closing circle they said this lesson was the best, it was awesome, they were excited but scared about running lessons for others. They were very pumped. It seemed like I had handed them over the keys to their learning.

EXTRA DAY – task completion

Creating the campaign board –  I came in last Friday and Sam said we were beyond student ideas and needed to give them specific tasks – so to pull small groups out of class. I had up to 12 students coming into the art room during the day at any time, and a number volunteering their time over recess and lunch to work on posters, logos and 3D objects. They asked to stay, they were so keen.  There was a terrific energy and commitment about the day - I guess this is not something they usually experience - the real sense of collaborative effort to a deadline.

I had a sense of what could go on the board based on the work they had already done, but the students when presented with the empty board or what others were doing kept making terrific suggestions.  

The centrepiece is  that every student in school to write a sticky note where they say something positive about another person. LOGO – FriendCHIPS – Caring, Helping, Including, Positive, Smile. Students suggested a bowl of chips with words on the “chips” to remind people to be positive, caring etc. We ran out of time to put it up but students stayed behind holding up posters and really keen to see the whole thing through. There was an enormous amount of ownership and excitement.

This day was an opportunity for me as an outsider to relate to the students in a completely different way, gave time for desultory but very important conversation about bullying, anger and meanness. I asked a few students what was it they wanted to change at the school and they said MEANNESS. 

Students would like to see less MEANNESS and more friendly behaviour.

My group of students were also very keen to put on their skits, and then when got feedback asked for time to practice them in their groups without direction from me. It showed me how important it was for them to feel they had control and could improve things themselves.

LESSON 4: Task oriented

Developing the lesson plans – building on student ideas, giving some structure, practicing, developing further, rehearsing, listening for the emergent understanding. 

Within my half of the Grade 4's each group had created a little dramatic skit, but had yet to see how it might sit in an interactive lesson. One pair had one boy punching another who was down, then PAUSED, REWIND and PLAYED a new version of helping. A group of girls, excluded a girl in a mean way, then NEXT DAY the girls recognised that they were mean, felt bad about it, and went over to the girl, apologised and she said in a very forgiving way “lets play”. 

Another boy demonstrated a conversation to make friends. And the last group showed a bullying situation over food, but the others didn’t think it was mean enough and wanted it to be meaner. It was very interesting seeing these as an indicator of what the students had picked up.

I could see the potential for these skits to be broken in half,  with a narrator asking the audience to come up with what they thought could make it right. Then the actors could show what we thought could make it right. So I suggested that we did that for the four scenarios and the students got it straight away. 

I guess I took on the role as the director, though everyone was making suggestions and creating their own characters. One boy acted as narrator for three of the skits. And he found a mantra – a shortcut as a result of doing it again and again – 

“That isn’t right. 

What do you think they are feeling? 

What could make it right?” 

I think what he created is the essence of a restorative approach with very simple formula. The hothouse of the dramatic moment seemed to create this. We all felt a bit under the bump to get the sequence to flow, the narration to work and to ensure all the performance issues of sound clarity, facing the audience were being met. I was worried I had taken away some of their ownership and there were periods where students who were not acting were restless, but when I suggested they broke into smaller groups there was a period of energised silliness around the classroom and they all came back to central mat where the narrator was practicing.

The last scenario was the most difficult with five characters - a ‘bully”, a person being bullied and three bystanders. For this scenario we were going to show a solution that was not helpful – the three bystanders going up to the ‘bully”, saying “bully, bully, bully.” Then the narrator would say that this isn’t right and ask the participants to go into groups and come up with a solution that could make it right. They could then act it out. 

Our solution was going to be, at my suggestion,  the bystanders going up to the bully and saying “That’s not right, what could you do to make it right.” But no matter how much we practiced it, one of the bystanders  said accusingly “That isn’t right. How do you think he feels? You need to give it back! You need to apologise!”

What is wrong with this? 

Well, in a restorative approach telling the bully what to do is not helping to break the cycle of power dramas. It is important to give him control. I guess my blinding insight a day later is that saying calmly to the bully “That isn’t right. What do you think XXX is feeling? What could you do to make it right?” the mantra of our narrator, is actually the restorative way – giving control to the bully on what they do to fix things. I realised later that the task for the audience is to come up with a solution that is right for everyone. This is something that the group is still developing an understanding about. Understanding such nuance is a big ask for Grade 4’s, yet they are so close. 

The narrator said he would look at writing some notes to help him - we need to fit in the bully definition and have yet to work through how we will set up the other activities that we want to do. I decided I needed to write a script based on what we had developed - afraid that the words that they had come up with might get lost. I am not sure if the students will use it. I think that the students have created something that will work really well on video for classes around Australia to consider.  It is very hard running lessons and capturing what happens via video and photos while you are doing it and I am keen to get some behind the scenes interviews with some of the students to find out their thinking. Could this be done by a school without outside help?

EXTRA REHEARSAL - tomorrow

NATIONAL DAY OF ACTION – action and implementation - Friday

Assembly, lessons, media invited to the school, take video

FOLLOW-UP – maybe the week after next

Reflection, getting feedback, deciding what next, videos?