Life of E's

Question:

I was going to wait and speak with you Monday about the following concern.  But, then I thought I should post it as a blog question because it is something that other members may have to deal with at some point. 

I will be speaking to a group of teachers on Wednesday.  Many of these teachers I have worked with in the past.  I will be speaking (in general) about bullying.  The principal of the campus told me that she wants me to focus on the attitude/behavior of the teachers rather than the students.  She said that she feels that her teachers are promoting bullying by their attitude and actions, which is quite possible. 

So, I have come up with 10 questions that educators need to ask themselves to determine if they are making the problem of bullying better or worse.  Here are a few examples:

1.  How well do you monitor your students?
2.  Do you intervene every time you witness bullying?

As you can see, I will be asking some difficult questions and I will be asking the teachers to do a lot of reflecting.

I don’t want to offend anyone and I don’t want the teachers to think I am pointing the finger and blaming them for the bullying behavior of the students.  The point I will try to make is that we have to take a good look at ourselves first before we can help the kids.

So, how do I do this tactfully?  I am going to mention that I am NOT pointing the finger at them.  What else can I do to make sure that I am not given a lifetime ban from working with this school in the future?

Answer:

You and I have talked about this…and you came up with some great solutions.  I am going to respond later today…and after I do, I hope you will share with the other members some of the ideas you came up with (because I know they worked well).

So stay tuned everyone!

Meggin

P.S.  I know I still haven’t responded on the blog, but Billy has:

Here are a few things I did:

1.  Instead of asking a question (and pointing a finger), I made a statement.  Here is an example of what I’m talking about.

A question I was going to ask is, “How well do you monitor your students?”  Instead of asking this question I made the statement, “We must carefully monitor our students.”  This worked really well.

2.  A few times throughout the presentation, I acknowledged the mistakes I have made as an educator.  This also worked well.  Here is a comment one participant made on the evaluation.
“I’m happy to hear that you as a teacher/administrator admitted that your were guilty like the rest of us.  We are all guilty of not having the right attitude towards our kids all of the time.”  I feel that audience members respect a presenter when he/she can admit the mistakes they have made.

Doing these two things really helped.  The presentation went well and it was a positive environment.

Posted by Billy Simms on 11/6/07

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Tags: difficult workshop issues, difilcult workshop topics, positive solutions for touchy subjects, solutions for difficult workshop issues, sticky subjects