You Can Stop Bullying: 180 Dilemmas for Elementary Students - Paperback

by Darylann Whitemarsh Ph. D. (Author)

Have you ever seen or heard unkind and mean behaviors in your school? Maybe you have seen students being unfriendly, disrespectful to other students, teachers, or their parents. What about someone hitting, punching, or kicking another student? Another area that shows up in school that you may have seen or heard is someone spreading rumors or calling someone a bad name. When you see or hear this, how does it make you feel? You may not be the victim now, but you witness this and wonder, when am I the next one to be picked on?

Bullying happens in all schools. What you just read are ways bullying occurs. You know bullying is happening, but you ask yourself, "What can I do about it?" In this book there are examples of bullying dilemmas that you face during your 180 days in school. Bullying dilemmas of all kinds are used by a bully to hurt other people or to make themselves feel better about themselves.

What is a dilemma? A dilemma is a real-life situation that happens where you have to make a very difficult choice between two or more options. You could also think of a dilemma as a tough, hard-to-solve situation or problem. The dilemmas you read and answer in this book are real and have happened in elementary schools just like yours. Here you get to write your own answer to how you would solve the dilemma on each page. That way you will learn about real-life situations where bullying occurs, understand it better, become a person who can make the right choices, and learn how to respond to a bully or a bullying situation.

After you have read the dilemma and thinking about how to solve the dilemma, how do you know you are making the right decision? What did you use to guide your decision? Here are some ways that will help guide you in your decision-making process:

• -Talk with your parents about the dilemma and get their opinion.
• -Talk with your teacher and ask him or her if your choice makes sense and if it's leading you to be a person of character. (A person of character is respectful and responsible.)
• -If you have brothers or sisters, read the dilemmas with them, and all of you can decide on a good response.
• -Discuss with your parents or teacher what a person of character is or is not?
• -Ask your teacher if you can use these dilemmas to discuss with the entire class.
• -If you are faith based, use this as your foundation for solving your dilemmas.
• -Ask yourself: What does a good person do in this situation? What is the right thing to do?

All of these will help lead you to a clear response to your dilemma. Remember that you can use more than one of these processes to decide if you made the right choice. That means you can talk with your parents or teacher to help you solve these dilemmas.

When you start reading the dilemmas, you need a plan to understand what you can do to solve them. Try these four steps: Think, Decide, Act, Reflect (T-D-A-R)

Think: After you have read the dilemma, think about it and decide if it's right or wrong for a person to do this.

Decide: Next, decide exactly what you would do. In other words, "what steps will you take to make the right choice in solving this dilemma?"

Act: Then, once you have made your decision of what to do, act on your decision. Do what you think is best.

Reflect: After you have solved the dilemma, ask yourself "Did my response move me in the right direction?"

Remember as you read the dilemmas, you are trying to understand and see what bullying is so you can react and respond to any dilemma in a positive way now and in the future.