Introduction to The Bully Blocker
Teaching is a demanding profession and many of you are time poor already. On top of this, bullying behaviours are on the rise.
The antics of bullies and the injuries inflicted on their targets disrupt your classroom and play havoc with the civility of the school yard. Yet another issue for teachers to manage. Another energy drainer to pull focus from the job of getting through an already crowded curriculum.
Reducing levels of bullying in schools would be life-changing for society but the challenge of that is complex. While waiting (impatiently) for policies and social changes to stem the rise of bullying, what can you do to help your students manage their response to bullying?
The materials in this book aim to help you with that challenge.
Another, equally important, goal of this book is to help your students learn about the damaging, sometimes tragic, consequences for an individual who is bullied. This awareness raising may lead to stopping or reducing some bullying behaviours. It may resonate sufficiently for some students to give pause to how they treat others. That would be a wonderful outcome.
Human beings are all too human
Realistically, even with a deeper understanding of the harms of bullying, some students will continue to bully others. Possibly they witness bullying at home, or as part of the broader school culture, or on the sports field, and repeat those negative behaviours. Perhaps they’re just insensitive, have underdeveloped emotional intelligence or have not had the benefit of positive role models in their lives.
The stark fact is that statistically some of your students will be suffering from being bullied, some will be bullies and many others will be bystanders to the problem – complicit perhaps by their silence or actively participating because peer pressure to join in feels less confronting than the risk of being humiliated and ostracised themselves. There are no winners when bullying is not addressed and managed effectively.
Regardless of whether any one of your students fall into the category of being a bully, a target or a bystander – and they may even assume all three roles in different contexts – the primary focus of this resource is to arm all students with a tool kit to handle being bullied.
Even those who are the obvious bullies in your classroom may one day find themselves on the other end of the stick. We all deserve to learn the valuable life skill of managing our response to bullying.
Evidence; not wishful thinking
This book, firmly grounded in the evidence-based work of Evelyn M. Field, psychologist, offers a structure to teach these skills to your students in a fun and engaging way.
I have summarised the key elements of Evelyn’s work into:
A relatable story line in the play script The Bully Blocker
Accompanying user-friendly teaching resources
Benefits of a playscript
Using a playscript is a playful resource for teachers. By its very structure, a play and its characters, gives your students freedom to play, explore, reflect, practice and learn.
The Bully Blocker allows the emotive topic of bullying to be explored in a safe, inclusive and reflective way. By focusing on the script and its characters, it reduces pressure on students. It provides space between any emotional reactions they have to the topic, and a frank discussion and exploration of the issues. Just as the characters in the play make discoveries and evolve, your students too can go on a journey where they become empowered by the skills they learn and practice.
The Bully Blocker gives an opportunity for all students – but especially for less confident ones – to explore this topic through the safety of assuming a character. Most of the roles are ‘dogs’ (albeit dogs with the ability to walk on two legs and the power of speech along with human-like personalities and very human problems). This device permits even greater emotional space between students acting the roles and the issues being probed.
Getting yourself up to speed
Many of us grew up hearing conflicting advice about how to handle being bullied – fight back, ignore it or tell the bully to stop. Evidence shows that none of these approaches help the bullied child.
Until I became aware of Evelyn’s work, I thought that ‘ignore it’ was the best way to respond and years ago offered this advice to my own children. Like me, when I first encountered Evelyn’s work, many of you may be on a steep learning curve.
There are seven scenes in the script with each scene exploring several concepts aimed at building:
your class’s understanding of the impacts of bullying
evidence-based skills which help a student cope effectively if they get bullied
There is a corresponding chapter of supporting materials based on each scene with content on the key concepts, discussion prompts and a range of activities related to the topics raised. The resources for Scenes Three and Five are significantly longer than the others and could fill two lessons each; meaning the overall material can facilitate nine lessons.
How you use the materials will naturally depend on your judgment for the age group, school culture and any current problems within the cohort you are teaching.
The key concepts can be ‘taught’ by you if you decide that best suits your class needs.
Or you may decide after a read through of each scene to dive straight into discussion and activities. Again, which discussion prompts and activities you choose will depend on age group, time available and educational needs.
Each chapter has working materials for the corresponding scene under the following headings:
Cast members in the scene
Props required
Precis
Concepts: key theory
A range of discussion prompts and activities
Basics of the script
The Bully Blocker features thirteen characters with an active role.
There is also the Wise Chorus in each scene.
For less confident students, a role in the chorus gives them the opportunity to have a speaking role within the safety of a group. There are suggested lines for different chorus members but these are a guide only – the chorus lines can be allocated to as few, or as many, students as works in your circumstances.
The chorus is written in an easy-to-follow rhythm of 8/6/8/6 and with a consistent rhyme scheme of A/B/C/B. This structure should facilitate easy participation.
For those students who are unable or unwilling to take on a reading/ speaking role, each scene ends with ‘music makers’ creating a soundscape to reflect the mood of the scene. The ‘instruments’ used to create the soundscape can be sophisticated (if you have access to actual instruments like tambourines, clapping sticks, recorders) or as basic as hand clapping and vocal sounds.
You could also appoint a ‘stage manager’ to handle the props or a Wise Chorus manager to conduct the lines. The aim is to create the opportunity for involvement of all students irrespective of their confidence and the resources available to you.
Perhaps your class or school’s drama department may be inspired to perform the play before an audience ...
However you make use of it, I sincerely hope The Bully Blocker script and related activities prove to be educationally useful as well as heaps of fun for you and your class.
So, on with the play!
Best wishes,
Anneka Champion