Less than a week until Mueller’s You Belong Week.  It is no coincidence that the National Day of Action Against Bullying and Violence occurs during this week. You Belong week is a time where we can reflect as a school and individually about how our actions negatively or positively affect those around us.  We are reminded during this week that we each play a part in ensuring others feel like they belong and in helping reduce bullying behaviour in our school.  So what is bullying and how is it different to unkind behaviour?

Below is a poster you may have seen in previous You Belong Weeks that describes this difference.

I wish I could say that we don’t have any ‘not nice’ or ‘mean’ behaviour at Mueller, but we are a school made up of people.  Our children are learning how to make and maintain friends, share, negotiate and treat others with respect. As they learn these skills, there may be ‘not nice’ and ‘mean’ behaviour.  So, what are some things your child can do if they experience ‘not nice’ or ‘mean’ words or actions?

  • Let the person know their words/actions have upset them
  • Ask the person to stop
  • Have a break from them and play with someone else
  • If the person says sorry, forgive them and keep enjoying their friendship
  • Play a different game or activity
  • Let the teacher know

Bullying is different to a one-off mean incident.  Bullying is ‘when someone says or does something intentionally hurtful and they keep doing it over and a period of time, even when you tell them to stop or show them that you are upset.’   Something that we do at Mueller to quickly identify repeated and intentional hurtful behaviour is our weekly pastoral care meeting.  The pastoral care meeting includes heads of sub-schools, coordinators, counsellor, chaplains, learning assistance and our nurses.  Teachers log concerns from parents and students each week and then our pastoral care team looks through these to identify students who need additional support.  This support may include working with our chaplains or counsellor for emotional support and proactive strategies.  It may be attending our social skills program or a behaviour plan.  It could be students being part of a mentoring program or further investigating learning needs.  While some of the strategies for mean behaviour may also be helpful for bullying behaviour, students may also need help in building positive behaviours so that hurtful language and actions are not part of the Mueller culture.

At Mueller, we want to see positive relationships amongst all students, so that each child feels like they belong in our community.  We particularly reflect on how we can continue to do this better as we plan for and carry out activities for You Belong Week.  This is not something we can do alone, it requires our whole school community to work together, staff, students and parents, to give grace, show kindness and commit to ‘living for MORE than me.’

Sarah Grady

Term 1 News