St. Peter’s Primary School

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What can we do..?

This week the CP Investigators have been thinking about bystanders – people who might witness something happening, but may not be part of the situation. In previous sessions the CP Investigators have talked about the impact that people ‘standing by and just watching’ can have on a bullying situation. The children agreed that there should be advice for people who find themselves witness to bullying, but maybe don’t know how to help. Below are some of the messages the children created:

Let the CP Investigators know of a time when you have helped someone, what did you do and how did you keep yourself safe?

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Posters: Children need adults to…

The CP Investigators have been thinking about what they need from the Adults in Their Lives and they have created messages in poster form. The children have designed these posters as aides to ‘help adults help children’ if they suspect or know the child is being bullied.

The posters capture recurring ideas that children have discussed during their CP investigates workshops, such as ‘adults are often too busy to help’ or ‘adults forget what it’s like for children who are experiencing bullying’ – the children hope that their posters will remind adults that they CAN help.

See some of the children’s poster ideas below. What do you think? What would you like others to think or do if you are experiencing bullying? Leave the investigators a comment below.

 

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What children need from adults.

At this weeks session we looked at what children say they need from adults when being subjected to bullying.   Together we looked at how we can give adults a clear message about what they should feel and what they should do when children ask them for help and support.

We discussed;

• “Who children think and say that they can trust”
• “What should they be like? What qualities and skills should they have?”
• “What do adults need to feel”
• “What do adults need to do”

Using these questions as a starting point our team discussed how all of these questions can be reflected in a poster made and designed to deliver a message to the adults in their lives, in school at home and in their communities.

Watch out for our posters! They will be coming your way very soon!

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Third Meeting

Today the CP investigators heard a short story about a child named Sandy; Sandy is having a difficult time with bullying and he isn’t sure what to do. Our CP Investigators listened to Sandy’s Story and afterwards they were set the challenge of suggesting how the story could be better for Sandy. Below are some of our CP Investigators insights, the investigators also chose to be recorded discussing their ideas.

To read Sandy’s Story for yourself, please click on this link…

CP Investigates (Sandy’s Story)

After hearing Sandy’s Story the Investigators had a really good discussion about the issues that Sandy is facing and the impact these can have on children’s lives, see below for some snippets from their conversation:

“Friends are really important to us. Sometimes adults don’t realise this.”

“Sandy was scared to talk to adults. He lacked the confidence to speak up.”

“Good playground monitors might help”

“Sandy could keep a diary of all the bad things that happen to him. He should write down his issues”

“Sandy needs more attention from his parents.”

“If Sandy had a happier life at home he might have more confidence to speak up.”

“Sandy needs to try harder to talk to adults he trusts.”

“Teachers should care and have the time to talk to everyone.”

“Teachers should know the children in their class and how they get on with each other.”

“Adults need to be more aware of what’s going on for children and encourage children to speak up.”

“When adults shout at us we lose confidence in them”

“We feel powerless when we’re not allowed to explain or speak”

“You can get a reputation and then you get blamed for stuff you haven’t done. It’s unfair.”

“Adults can bully us.”

“Teachers don’t always see what’s going on. People do stuff behind teachers backs.”

“We get dismissed because we’re children.”

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Second Meeting

A Healthy Happy and Safe School

This week we looked at what we need to be healthy, happy and feel safe at school. We talked about what happens on our way to school, how we get there and who with. We also looked at break times and lunchtimes, our time in the playground and in the corridors. We thought about what happens in the classroom, our teachers and learning assistants and what they can do to help us feel happy and safe when in school. Some of us interviewed each other with our new CP Investigates notebooks and you can read some of our comments here beside the photographs of our Healthy Happy Safe School poster.

We hope you enjoy!

“When adults don’t listen you get a sinking feeling”

“Adults don’t always listen, talk to a friend if you can’t talk to an adult”

“Some people are more sensitive than others”

“Some people bully without realising it”

“Bullys take away your confidence”

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First Meeting

We met for our first session as Children’s Parliament Investigators in St. Peter’s to begin investigating bullying. But first we wanted to talk about coming together as a team, how we would work together, discuss our ideas, and share our work with our school, our family and our community.

During this first meeting we looked at the idea of human dignity. We discussed what we knew about human dignity and the feelings we experienced when our dignity was respected and promoted or how we felt when our dignity wasn’t respected and we were made to feel bad or small.  In pairs we produced a “dignometer” which you can see on this page and we hope that you enjoy seeing how we wanted to represent our feelings using words, images and colour.

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Leave a comment below and let the investigators know what you think about dignity…