Friendship Month – Week 3 (Williamsburg Public School)

February 17th, 2015

PLEASE CLICK THE BLUE TITLE ABOVE TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE – This week, we continue to focus on FRIENDSHIP.

A very important part of being a good friend involves understanding the term bullying. This includes knowing what bullying is, what to do if someone is being bullied and what to do if you witness bullying taking place. In class this week, students will be discussing bullying. Here is some helpful information for parents to discuss bullying at home.

Sometimes all aggressive or mean behaviour is called bullying, yet when we look at the definition of bullying, we can see this is not the case. Bullying is a conscious, deliberate and repeated behaviour by one or more people, which is intended to harm others.

The information below demonstrates what behaviours are bullying.

What Is Bullying	What is Not Bullying
Any of the following aggressive behaviours are bullying if the actions are repeated, and done with the intention of gaining power.	Any of the following aggressive behaviours are not bullying if the actions occur once (i.e., no pattern) or done with no intention of gaining power.
Physical Attack such as:	Physical behaviours such as:
Bumping into someone Pushing, Shoving, Tripping Hitting Punching, Kicking Fighting	Accidently bumping into someone Making others play things a certain way Pushing, shoving, tripping, hitting, etc.) which occurs ONCE (i.e., is not a repeated or pattern of behaviour)
Verbal Attack—for any kind of difference, such as:	Verbal behaviours such as:
Racial Gender Physical (height, weight, glasses, etc.) Skills Ability/Disability Physical Appearances (cloths, jewellery, hair cut) Taking Possessions or Stealing Exclusion from groups/activity	A statement of dislike toward or about someone A single act of telling a joke about someone Arguments or heated disagreements between two or more people/groups (the pattern of which is not repeated to gain power) Expressions of unpleasant thoughts or feelings regarding others
Non-Verbal Attack such as:	Non-verbal behaviours such as:
Staring or glaring ‘Pretending to whisper’ while looking at someone	Being excluded Not playing with someone