This was a new venture for us - our first tour of secondary schools! The aim of this tour was to expose all the issues that bullying entails in various different and entertaining ways. We knew from the outset that we couldn't solve the problems of bullying, but we felt the more the issue was raised and discussed, the more the schools could find ways of dealing with their own individual issues. We took this tour to the following schools;

St. Dunstan's Community School, Glastonbury
Blake School, Bridgwater
Ansford Community School, Castle Cary
East Bridgwater Community School, Bridgwater

We spent the whole day at each school and ran the sessions in the following way.

Each morning we worked with one group of about 30 year 7 students. This group worked on a movement piece entitled "The Bully and the Victim", in readiness for a performance later that day. This morning group also created some characters of bullies and victims which would also be used in the afternoon.

The afternoon session was a performance of a 'televised' chat show called "Some People Say...". This chat show was performed in front of the whole of year 7 and was on the subject of bullying. The show included a performance of "The Bully and the Victim" and also used the characters created by the morning group as panelists on the show. Using this as a starting point the show went on to host a debate with the audience and their staff and the panelists.

At the end of the show each student was given a leaflet on how to deal with bullying, either from Childline or from the Department for Education. They were also given a questionnaire which was to be filled in anonymously. The questionnaire asked the students about any bullying situation they might have encountered and how they dealt with the situation. These questionnaires can then be compiled into a graph showing how they deal with bullying situations and whether there can be any improvements.

This tour revealed some very frank and telling stories about bullying from the children and the staff. The unusual way of dealing with this subject as a chat show seemed to let the children and staff speak quite freely about how they felt, and all schools felt their students had gained from the experience.

QUOTES

"...thank you for the excellent visit to our school...as head of year, I certainly feel that I will refer back to the session when dealing with bullying incidents in the future..."

Craig Brown, Head of year 7,
Ansford Community School.

"...I have already recommended the Children's World Bullying Workshop to two different schools and would not hesitate to do so in the future..."

Jennie Jones, Head of year 7,
St. Dunstan's Community School.

See particularly the report to senior management by C. James, Senior Liaison Coordinator, Somerset Children's Fund, which assesses the impact of a day-long workshop in Minehead Middle School.

The Anti-Bullying Workshop Day is available to schools for £300
If you are interested in booking this workshop, please e-mail
ArabellaChurchill(at)childrensworldcharity.org