How do we create compassion in our classroom?
How do we help students feel comfortable to be themselves. Easier said than done. Perhaps by giving them time to work together, depend on each other, help each other. It's hard to imagine teaching content as well as socio-emotional skills in the process.
If every lesson we give involves some kind of small group work, students can begin to feel more connected to each other.
It takes a lot of responsibility on the teacher to be aware of the needs of the students, like which ones are more meek and timid, and which ones are helpful and outgoing. Matching up students in group work time to help balance out the class while engaging them to get to know each other is definitely not an easy task, but very necessary.
I think to combat cyber bullying, having a unit on bullying and showing a movie or media clips on the subject would help spark thoughts, ideas, and conversation, as well as raising awareness. I think a good place to follow would be to ask students what they can do about cyber bullying, make a paster or a video broadcasting their ideas and solutions.
We all know that bullying isn't eradicated by having an authoritative figure punishing a bully, but rather it needs to be attacked from all angles, especially in peer circles, and from the ground up.
It is so necessary to have time to talk about the impact, dangers, and how students can play a huge part to end cyber bullying in each class in each grade. The problem is such a huge one in our nation, and it needs a lot of attention.
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