DESCRIPTION OF CONTENTS
Cyber-teasing, cyber-conflict, cyber-attack … It is not always easy for schools to find a suitable reply to this phenomenon. Indeed, how to grasp a phenomenon that occurs not only at school but mostly outside it?
This is the reason why Child Focus developed a pedagogical dossier for lower and middle secondary school. It aims to inform schools on the different aspects of a policy to fight cyberbullying, and to help them concretely involving students in the reflection.
The dossier provides teachers with a series of useful methods to dedicate one or more lessons to this issue.
Each method is primarily based on dialogue and exchange of ideas. Working and thinking together, teenagers share their experiences and consider the question from new perspectives. As for the teachers, they mainly act as support: offering students a space for collective reflection, themes and leads, encouraging them to ask the right questions.
Teenagers need to feel free and trustful to share their experience, which is not that easy, considering that 75 % have been through that situation. Therefore, a certain number of rules are necessary to foster a constructive dialogue. The author proposes five basic rules:
• What is said during the lesson is between us
• We are honest
• If I don’t want to say something, I don’t have to.
• We listen to the others.
• We respect the others and don’t make fun of them.
At the end of the dossier, there is a recap exercise. It consists in gathering the achieved knowledge in order to create a booklet for parents. Creating a final product is motivating for students. Besides, such an initiative also informs parents, killing two birds with one stone.
COMMENTS ON THIS PUBLICATION
The vocation of this dossier is to reverse peer pressure, which tends to keep children silent, and on the contrary bring them to be willing to help others.
The dossier includes six practical, ready-to-use methods for teachers, headmasters, counsellors and other concerned people, to address the topic of cyberbullying and discuss with students the role they play actively in the phenomenon.
It aims to make students think about the consequences of their acts and motivate them to use the Internet with responsibility and respect.
It must be noted that the website “Click Safe” created by Child Focus is the object of a review in the section “Training Sources”.
