Nivedita Mukerjee
Education consultancy for parents and schools
Bullying in school age children : Part 1
When I started to discuss about writing an article on bullying, the concerns came pouring in from fellow educators and parents of school going children. Not to mention from children themselves. This is not a new issue. Not a unique challenge for schools. Not something each of us has not known in our growing years. However, the proportions it has taken now, take a look at the few of these links below as a sample – I thought of tackling it one step at a time. It does need to be tackled. It does need to be stopped. And for that it needs to be understood.
14 year old leaps to his death after bullying
West Virginia boy 9 kills bullying family
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-187330/Boy-driven-suicide-bullies.html
Lawsuit alleges pervasive violence in NYC schools
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/news/school-bullying/
As an educator, for any topic that is vast and complex, one which has varied level of understanding and thus tolerance of by children, parents and teachers in different contexts and geographies, I structured the topic of ‘Bullying’ in three parts. That of understanding, preventing and dealing. What else you would like me to include in this series?
What is understood as bullying in schools and what factors lead to becoming a bully or a child at risk of being bullied?
What does it mean?
The dictionary meaning of Bullying, in Hindi, ranges from ‘Badmaash’ to ‘Gunda’ and ‘Dhaunsia’; ‘Harcelement’ to ‘brute’ in French; ‘Acoso’ to ‘abuso’ in Spanish; ‘ Mobbing’ and ‘Drangsalieren’ to ‘Tyrannisieren’ in German… the words range in intensity. However, the common essence is that of unwanted and aggressive behavior.
What does it look like?
Unwanted, aggressive behavior among school aged children that involves a real or perceived power balance. Often, the behavior is repeated. It may be amongst the same set of children or the bully/bullied might change over time. Or, the circle of influence of the bully might expand. Children who are bullied and who bully others may have serious, lasting problems.
How is a situation identified to be that of bullying?
In order for a situation to be considered as that of bullying, besides the behavior to be aggressive, look out for :
(http://www.stopbullying.gov/what-is-bullying/definition/)
A clear indication of bullying is fundamentally to be understood as an imbalance of power. Children who bully are most likely to use either their physical strength, or access to some secret like an embarrassing information, an escapade, a prank that may be considered unpardonable or unacceptable, a rendezvous that is not acceptable to the family/school/peers of the child/ren who is/are being bullied. Sometimes, children who are popular for their attitude or appearance, or are cognitively sharper etc. use this power to control and /or physically and/ or emotionally/ psychologically harm the other child/children. The imbalance of power can change over time and at different situations, with same or different people. Bullies often make threats, spread rumors, physically attack, verbally abuse, form cliques, exclude the other child/ren from a group.
Who bullies and who gets bullied?
There are several factors that can make a child or a group of children bullies or get bullied.
Some of those who are potential targets for being bullied for example are:
- Children who look different from their peers in some way or the other as obese/underweight, short sighted/astigmatism/wear correction or reading glasses, new to class/section, from different socio-economic strata – poorer or richer, studious/smart/nerd/laggard.
- Children who stammer, appear anxious, have poor body image, exhibit low self esteem.
- Children who have few friends, who are less liked, are less popular, belong less to any group in class/school.
- Children who are annoying, unclean, provocative, smelly or antagonise some child/ren for some reason.
- Children who are depressed, come from in-attentive/broken/separated/ busyfamily, or are over chaperoned and monitored, or are not heard or attended to adequately.
Likewise, there are some factors that can create bullies out of some children. Some of those for example are:
- Children who are very close to their peers over years and are constantly pre occupied towards making themselves popular in any which way they can.
- Children who like to dominate, who like to steer conversations, who like to talk but not listen, who want to compete but not collaborate, who do not like to acknowledge contribution or give credits where due.
- Children who are aggressive, get easily frustrated, think less of others, think of themselves as more competent than others, cannot tolerate those who they or others think are more competent than themselves in any way.
- Children who have contempt for rules, have friends who break them, who want to rebel continuously on every matter and also bully others.
- Children who have seen and experienced verbal and/or physical violence as a way of expressing their views and asserting themselves.
https://about.me/niveditamukerjee
More on bullying, in part -2 . Please send in your views and concerns, thoughts and queries. Especially situations that according to you were incidences of bullying and how was it handled. Or was it? How else could it have been handled differently and/or better? Please exclude or change names as necessary to maintain confidentiality. I will include it in the next discussion in this AskNiv series on Bullying. You can post your mail id if you want to be notified when it is published.
An open letter to fellow educators. Happy Teacher’s day!
Teacher’s day – 5th September.
Dear fellow educators,
Jem and Scout want to build a snowman after it snows for the first time in their lives, but there isn’t enough snow to do it. Jem has the idea to build the base out of mud and cover the outside with snow. Their father, Atticus, is tickled by their ingenuity and tells Jem, “From now on I’ll never worry about what’ll become of you, son, you’ll always have an idea… I can’t tell what you’re going to be – an engineer, a lawyer, or a portrait painter.”
This paragraph from Harper Lee’s “To Kill a mocking bird” now resonates with each of us – the educators of today… It reiterates of the enormously onerous task that is upon us in preparing our students for the next century. From engineers, doctors, lawyers – we added the profession of software engineers over the last few decades. What about the next few decades? For students of 2020 school leaving batch? The workforce of 2030? The rise of entirely new careers such as data scientists, social media strategists, and UX designers (user experience – demolishing the hubris of the architects of user interface) or, some other? I have in my life of 50 years seen the professions of telephone operators, travel agents, bank tellers, video parlor operators, printing press managers going obsolete. DIY (Do IT Yourself) kits, cheap and accessible digital printing on any surface, digital 3D printers for anything from spare parts to making prototypes are available to amateurs and professionals alike. Control with specific skill related dependencies has shifted to variable, applicable, ingenious and idea based creativity.
The World Economic Forum recommends that the educational system be completely redesigned to emphasize skills like critical thinking, problem-solving, creativity, collaboration and digital literacy. It’s no longer about preparing kids for a particular career, but it’s about teaching a mindset, a behavior, and a skill of lifelong learning. According to the US Department of Labor, 65% of today’s students will have careers that don’t exist yet.
I initially started writing this by trying to imagine what careers of the year 2030 might look like. I would be an octogenarian, as would be most of the parents of my generation of educators whose age today range from 40 to 50 years. Our parents are wading through satellite TV, skype calls, using video face time across geographies and time zones, sharing photos on “what’s app” of their travels and grand children… I started to wonder what my students would be into when I would survive to that age, three decades from now. We will be there in all likelihood given the gene therapies, organ transplants and growing spare organs of one’s own from stem cells – the pace with which medical research and technology for health and wellbeing is moving. I began with applying existing careers to newly created technologies (Animatronic Veterinarian?) and then extrapolated other careers based what new discoveries can afford us (Celestial Fashion Designer?). I realized I could just as easily play this for a mad libs game – not tried yet but aspiring to do that soon…( http://www.madlibs.com/), that combined different nouns and adverbs in infinite different ways, and come up with a list that is just as likely to happen as any well thought out and researched list. How about a Drone Rancher, a Holoportation operator, a Visualization consultant, a Virtual Tapestry designer for Evacuated Tube Transportation Technologies (http://www.et3.com/), a Gamer DE addiction Therapist, an Avatar relationship manager… go ahead, make up a few with your students in your next class!
(http://www.futuristspeaker.com/business-trends/55-jobs-of-the-future/)
As educators, we can now comfortably stop fretting about managing classrooms (http://www.odditycentral.com/pics/swedens-classroom-free-school-the-future-of-education.html) or for that matter swing from one prescribed curriculum to the other and lesson plans for creating the next generation of engineers or teaching kids to be coders; what we want to do is help ignite kids’ passions, unleash their inner inventor, build up their own creative confidence so that they can be the ones to invent the world they want to live in. Schools as makers space? Educators as collaborators? The STEM (Science Technology Engineering Mathematics) is gathering a different velocity with STEAM (STEM + Arts)…
What we can do is work together to help children tap into their ingenuity and build their snowmen. From then on we’ll never worry about what’ll become of the next generation; they’ll always have an idea.
Yours truly,
Nivedita Mukerjee
A fourth generation educator, an aspiring MadLib gamer and plans to live to see the future careers today’s students would be creating for themselves.
https://about.me/niveditamukerjee
Save Me a Seat – A book review
Authors : Sara Weeks and Gita Varadarajan
Published by: Scholastic Press, May 2016
What starts with a lunch room scenario, becomes soon a story of two young children, two families, two countries… while sharing perspectives on food, culture, rituals and unraveling an understanding … of relationships. Of parenting styles. Of overcoming obstacles. Of assumptions.
I totally enjoyed the vocabulary that ranged from ‘to throw chunks’, to ‘kan drishti’ and food items as diverse as apple crisps and cumin flavored nan khatais. It’s a story told in first person by two 5th graders with nothing but the SCHOOL in common. Then there is Dillon. The story is set in the all-familiar school routine, in the class room, in the resource room and the lunch room. Amidst all this is the intrigue of dealing with Dillon Samreen. This is about one child who is ‘FOB’, another who has ‘APD’ and a third who is ‘ABCD’. The narrative gathers a certain pace, such that you want to read through to the end at one go. There’s enough momentum built up to make you want to continue reading the glossaries and recipes well after the story ends.
As the school week unfolds, so does the story over 49 short chapters and 216 pages. Class topper rah – VEE (not RAH – vee) has moved to America with his family from Bangalore, India. He studied in an English medium school, but no one can understand his accent. He is asked to go to resource room by the class teacher Ms. Beam. He is shrimpy, brings home lunch and is vegetarian. Joe has lived in the same town but his best friends are not with him in Grade 5. He can understand all that’s going on in the class room but finds it all very noisy and is very shy. Joe is also asked to go to resource room by class teacher Ms. Beam. He likes to talk to Ms. Frost there. He is very big, is always hungry and can eat a lot. Both Ravi and Joe don’t think they have anything in common and neither of them have anyone to eat lunch with.
It has the emotions and plot that can very well lend itself to deep, reflective discussions. While the main protagonists are three 5th graders but it is equally enjoyable for children of a couple of grades lower or higher.
“These candies have four layers. Most people assume there are only three, but assumptions are often wrong. There is more to them than meets the eye”. This can be easily said about ‘Save Me a Seat’. Sarah and Gita, both the authors have portrayed their protagonists with humour and authenticity and given us a refreshingly good novel to read. This could well be the beginning of a genre!
A.P.J. Sir, RIP. 1931-2015
Subject: An open letter from a teacher.
Dear A.P.J sir,
This is a letter from me, a teacher, to you, the quintessential teacher. And while you are Padma Bhushan, Padma Vibhushan, Bharat Ratna, (ex)President of India… I also know you for being the student who never gave up education despite the meager means of family. I know you as a career scientist, as a reluctant politician, our 11th President and the one who always inspired the youth to dream.
I want to ask you some questions sir, and I want to think aloud. More than anything else, I want to reminisce in the era, that was you. You are the politician that one would aspire to be, the scientist that one should study to be, and the teacher that one can try to be. I want to learn from you to be the youth to rise above difficulty, the professional to be capable, the leader to acknowledge the team’s contribution, the genuine human being to connect with people around, to be humble and stay away from hubris. I also want to know some of what you felt at those cross roads that came along your way.
Was it warm and windy in Thumba’s cattle shed A.P.J sir? or was it “cool” to hang out there, the shed being the house for India’s first rocket launcher! Thumba Equatorial Rocket launcher – must have been a fine name plate for the cattle shed to boast of being the laboratory to work on sounding rockets. You must have been quite a creative scientist to have trained from NASA on sounding rockets and then see the potential in Thiruvananthpuram’s little coastal Thumba’s cattle shed. Kudos to Dr. Vikram Sarabhai to have seen that twinkle in your eyes. Or should I say he saw Rohini! India’s first satellite to travel to earth’s orbit on the SLV3 you designed, developed and built at the Vikram Sarabhai Space Research Center.
Sir, this summer you tweeted – “Today, I remember the hot day of 1998 at Pokhran: 53C. When most of the world was sleeping; India’s nuclear era emerged.” It took my memory to the time when the defining moment happened in the Thar dessert, 17 years ago. As the Chief of DRDO then, you supervised the 5 detonations – first a fusion bomb and the following 4 fission. How was it to camp for a fortnight with your team of 58 engineers and then on the bright night of Buddha Purnima, 11th May, 1998 conduct the explosions? Undetected by all intelligence agencies around the world… to be then recognized as a nuclear weapon state.
This Eid, when Iftaar parties were doing the rounds of the homes of people and politicians alike, where were you A.P. J sir? Which orphanage’s children were you sharing your ‘sevian’ with? While you were at Rashtrapati Bhavan, the country felt the sprit of a real ‘Iftar party’ with you as you donated the savings every year by skipping the party, to the orphanage. You knew and followed your traditions and scriptures in letter and spirit. The first occupant of the Rashtrapati Bhavan to connect to the masses directly, particulary the children and youth. Reaching out in person and through technology.
A.P.J. sir, or shall I call you Dr. Kalam perhaps? What with some 40 universities bestowing honorary doctorates to you? Wondering how would that sit along side your award by MTV, twice over (2003 and 2006) for being the Youth Icon of the year J? … where ofcourse sit many other very important and otherwise diverse range of awards – Indian ones – the Indira Gandhi Award for National Integration (1997)the Veer Savarkar Award by the Govt. of India (1998) and some of the international ones – Royal Society, U.K’s King Charles II Medal (2007), or for that matter, the International von Karman Wings Award by the California Institute of Technology, U.S.A (2009), besides the Hoovar Medal same year by ASME Foundation, U.S. A. Closer home, from Chennai, the Alwars Research Center recognized you with the Ramanujan Award (2000). While you were much recognized by the world wide community of Engineers as the IEEE made you their honorary member (2011), the teacher in me finds October 15th recognized as the world’s student’s day by the United Nations (on your 79th Birthday), very befitting. For I would love to be your student sir. I would like to learn from you how to teach my students the five lines you always taught to yours, to speak to them selves every morning:
- I am the best
- I can do it.
- God is always with me.
- I am a winner.
- Today is my day.
– A.P.J.
I want to be able to tell my students more often:
“All of us do not have equal talent. But, all of us have an equal opportunity to develop our talents.” A. P. J.
I want to learn how to convey:
“It is very easy to defeat someone, but it is very hard to win someone” A. P. J.
How do I embody as a teacher what you said :
“Be more dedicated to making solid achievements than in running after swift but synthetic happiness” A. P. J.
Teach me A.P. J. sir how I can implore my peers that:
“ Thinking should become your capital asset, no matter whatever ups and downs you come across in your life.”
And the hard truth:
“Without your involvement you can’t succeed. With your involvement you can’t fail.”
Thank you Jainulabdeen and Ashiamma, for your precious gift of Avul Pakir Jainulabdeen Abdul Kalam to the nation. The village of Dhanushkodi in Rameshwaram, Tamilnadu is a special place in the geography of the country. It gave us a teacher to inspire generations of students, teachers, scientists, politicians…
“Learning gives creativity, creativity leads to thinking. Thinking provides knowledge and knowledge makes you great” A.P.J.
Rest In Peace dear sir, or perhaps, Reply If Possible?
Sincerely,
Nivedita
Teacher
28th July
Nivedita Mukerjee 