I am the Middle School Counselor at Yokota Air Base in West Tokyo - Fussa Shi. Our Administration and staff have seen bullying and we have a zero tollerance for it. Students are counseled and reminded of the hurt it causes and how they too could be bullied and that discipline will occure if it does not stop immediatly. Our students usually take this as truth and curb their behavior. Teachers monitor at every break and during lunch. Students still bully when they are unsupervised and unless bystanders join in the efforts and the victim tells an adult then it continues. We are aware of this issue and try to keep the students vigilent to stop and report it.

Hi Michael - which program are you using in your anti-bully campaign? One of the things I hope we can do is to post resources to help others learn the advantages and disadvantages of the various approaches to this topic.

I use the OPHEA program out of Canada (Ontario Physical and Health Education Association) MS curriculum which starts with harassment and moves forward into Bullying. I have a good video from Discovery Education called Bullying: Not just a guy thing that gets at the social dynamics of group participation and silent consent effectively. I also have an class activity called Bully Trial that I created which I should polish up and post. One of the things I am interested in clarifying is how other schools both from a PSHE and disciplinary perspective define harassment, bullying, and teasing or other terms to help students understand the difference between kidding/joking to more damaging forms. Any thoughts on that, anyone?

Hi Adam, Michael.......here's another bang on the Restorative drum! Because the philosophy is different to the retributive model of 'you did this the school will do that' (a just desserts model is often and example of administrative bullying and harms the offender to varying degrees) problems and incidents are approached with a different lens. Rather than asking was it violence, harassment, bullying, aggression, fooling around, teasing pushed too far, Restorative practice simply asks 'has harm been done?' If so the next question is 'who has been affected by the behaviour and who is responsible for that harm? Labelling students as bullies is not helpful as they often get stuck processing that rather than reflecting on their behaviour and how it has affected others. Research now tells us the we need to teach boys in particular about empathy.....sitting home on suspension or isolated in the Principal's office probably won't do that. There is an interesting paper on Zero Tolerance available on the American Psychological Association site. Essentially it says that we marginalize emotionally/socially disabled kids even more because they can't navigate the social morays ending up always in trouble.

Latest approaches are to educate the bystanders as much as the victims and wrongdoers.....evidence shows that bullying episodes stop almost immediately. Anyway I will stop rambling on and suggest that anybody who would like to learn and explore a range of Restorative interventions (recently commented by Dr. Marty Seligman as a positive approach) please come along to the workshops we are offering next year.
Dave V.