Worksheet 38 Responding to Conflict 1: Scenario and Actions
Worksheet 39 Conflict Triangle: Conflict Triangles 1 and 2
Worksheet 40 Feelings Detective: Scenarios
Worksheet 41 Responding to Conflict 2: Our Responses to Conflict Action Cards
Worksheet 42 Responding to Conflict 2: Scenarios
Worksheet 43 Who’s Right, Who’s Wrong?: Who’s Right? Scenarios
Worksheet 44 Who’s Affected?: Scenarios
Acknowledgement
We would like to extend our thanks to Katherine Wickens for giving up her free time and her commitment to completing a series of illustrations, within a very tight time frame, to ensure that our resources are engaging for young people.
Part 1
Understanding Girl Bullying
Chapter 1
Introduction
In recent years bullying has hit the headlines with startling regularity, publicizing shocking stories of student violence, school chaos and emotional distress. While the media contest that bullying has reached epidemic proportions in our schools and communities, it is largely unclear whether the numbers of incidents are rising, or our young people are finding new, more sensational ways in which to hurt, harass and intimidate others.
Whether bullying is rising as citizenship declines, or society is simply more aware of the problem and impact, the issues remain the same: schools and communities are breeding a culture of disrespect, isolation, fear, aggression, indifference and separation. Bullying is unique in its cross-culture influence, knowing no boundaries in terms of location, class, race, gender, age and beliefs. Bullying is as much a problem in the rural school as the inner city workplace.
We now seem to understand bullying far better than ever before, with countless research papers and books published on the subject each year. It is evident that far more schools than ever before are committing time and resources to tackling the issue, with government support. UK schools must have an anti-bullying policy by law, and many US states have introduced anti-bullying legislation, defining bullying in state law and outlining prevention policies for public schools. Despite these advances and the many bullying prevention and emotional literacy programmes introduced to schools, students and parents still complain of victimization, staff report that behaviour management is one of their most time-consuming activities, and an all too-high percentage of students truant and ultimately disengage from school before they were due to leave.
In our work as anti-bullying officers in the UK, we supported countless victims and perpetrators of bullying, their parents and the schools to understand and resolve issues of bullying. We heard numerous stories of aggression, fear, powerlessness, confusion, exasperation and frustration from all parties. As we strived to train school staff, develop policies and resources, and respond to individual cases, we began to acknowledge that issues referred to us where females were both perpetrators and victims accounted for the majority of our face-to-face work with students. Confounding this deluge of need was the complexity of the work: rarely cases could be solved with simple intervention, and often it was difficult to determine whether incidents were to be categorized as bullying or conflict, and therefore be able to identify a victim and perpetrator with certainty. Bullying is defined as repeated, deliberate behaviour, where a sense of powerlessness can make it difficult for someone to defend themselves.
While this definition helps us to clarify the nature of bullying and highlights the main facets of it being deliberate and repeated behaviour, in the real world discerning bullying from conflict – an argument, friendship fallout, or even a physical altercation – can be much more difficult. As we were discovering, particularly with girl bullying, identifying the victim and perpetrator wasn’t as clear cut as first appeared, as girls would often become embroiled in retaliation and taking sides. However, this is not to say there weren’t many incidents where it was clear someone was on the receiving end of often vicious, distressing and harmful behaviour, which should be classed as a bullying incident and dealt with as such.
On a daily basis we heard the frustration and uncertainty of staff feeling overwhelmed by low-level incidents that consumed their time and rarely seemed to be resolved despite intervention and support. These incidents involved both girls and boys of all ages, on a spectrum from minor disagreements to physical fights resulting in hospitalization. However, the issue requiring the most time and effort to resolve was relationship problems within friendship groups of girls, where girls would destroy friendships with startling regularity, complain of rumour spreading, damage reputations, make verbal comments and put-downs, emotionally blackmail, and exchange ‘dirty looks’, to name but a few female tactics. The cycle and exchange of roles from perpetrator to victim left teachers struggling to identify any one action as bullying; however, it seemed apparent that these kinds of behaviours were a subset of bullying, and overall, created a climate of fear, distrust, disconnection and cliques throughout the school.
This book and the activities included here were written for the teacher, counsellor, teaching aide, behaviour specialist or educational psychologist who has experienced the demoralizing rollercoaster of trying to help girls make and maintain friendships and avoid relationship issues escalating to bullying.
Our approach and activities are designed to support the overall well-being of girls, address their social and emotional needs, and help to improve behaviour, relationships and learning across the school. As the title suggests, Surviving Girlhood aims to help young women navigate their way through what has always been a challenging time, as childhood gives way to adolescence. At a time when young people are subjected to huge pressures, temptations and external stresses, life can feel more like survival. As caring adults we want the best for our children and to see them relish life. Our hope is that adolescence is a time of growth, maturity, learning and fun that builds a strong foundation for the future.
This book has been written to help tackle girl bullying and relationship problems by preventing such issues from occurring in the first place. Surviving Girlhood will upskill our young people with tools, strategies and, most importantly, awareness. The five key themes to Surviving Girlhood start from the ‘inside-out’, reflecting a philosophy of understanding and connecting with ourselves, to better understand and connect with others.
The five key themes to Surviving Girlhood
• Theme 1: Being Me
• Theme 2: Influences
• Theme 3: Respect, Responsibilities, Relationships
• Theme 4: Managing Relationships
• Theme 5: Conflict Resolution
Chapter 2
A New Way
While it is crucial that we educate our children to understand what bullying is, how they can prevent it, to whom they should report bullying, and the other nuances that empower young people to be able to tackle the issue, it is clear that this is only one part of the picture. Viewed in terms of a model of escalation (Figure