Action Research Project Update: Classroom Meetings Progress

So far, as a campus, we have begun implementation of the Olweus Anti-Bully Program onto our campus, as has the rest of our district. We have attended staff development on this program. Through this staff development we have looked at statistics of bullying in schools. This included types of bullying, bullying in relation to genders, age, and race. We have looked at when and where in the school-day bullying most often occurs, and general ways of increasing teacher monitoring around the school. We have watched videos on various scenarios as well as how the program suggests we would handle that situation as well as the correct terminology to use with it. We also watched examples of classroom meetings as well as practiced attending and leading a classroom meeting. Teachers were told that they are to conduct a 20 minute classroom meeting once a week. There was some grumbling about this at first, and although I didn’t voice my opinion, I thought the same thing: I’m having a hard time fitting in everything in my lesson plans every day and now I have to add another 20 minute lesson? The students completed an anonymous survey about bullying on our campus. We have gone over the results of this survey as an Olweus committee. Some of the more interesting findings were: 1) A high percentage of girls report that they have felt bullied by other girls, BUT 0% of girls admit to ever bullying at school. 2) Of the types of bullying on our campus, the type that is drastically higher than the rest is exclusion. From there, the committee decided that our major focus for the rest of the year would be addressing the exclusion issue on our campus. Not excluding others is one of the Olweus rules that are posted in every classroom, and every common area of the school. We also went over the findings and decided what would be appropriate to tell the staff and parents, without highly alarming anyone. One good point that we saw was that our school was extremely below the line of the national average of other elementary schools. This made us proud of the student body, because without even implementing the program yet, our students show less bully-like behavior than other schools. Also, teachers have been conducting classroom meetings. However, I have noticed, even in my own classroom that with STAAR getting closer and closer, the meetings seem to have dropped to every two weeks, if that. I hope that after the stress of STAAR is over for the year, the classes will find time to pick them back up to a regular weekly schedule. I am looking forward to surveying the teachers and finding out what they think about the classroom meetings as well as how often the classroom meetings are actually occurring. I will be doing this at the end of the school year. I’m also eager for next year when the students again take the Olweus poll. This will show us whether we’re on the right track as far as implementing our anti-bullying effort.