"Small Steps to Success believes that children can aspire to be anything they want to be in life with hard work, determination and above all true belief in their abilities. Small Steps to Success provides quality workshops for children that will inspire and motivate them to develop a more positive attitude to life and learning, in a bid to make their lives better. Our aim is to raise aspirations for the future!"

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Anti-bullying Workshop

This workshop is suitable for:

  • Any age group

DURATION OF WORKSHOP: Approximately 1 hour

WORKSHOP OVERVIEW
This workshop is based on my own personal bullying ordeal when I was in my first 2 years of high school. It all started with a serious incident which always leaves the children stunned, whenever the story is told you can hear a pin drop in the room. The workshop tells my story but aims to not only highlight to children the effect bullying can have on a child's life along with their family but to help prevent other children suffering in the same way. It also encourages any child that has been bullied to beat the bullies, and to understand that success is the best form of revenge! It encourages children not to become victims of bullying but to be a survivor - that despite the bullying they encountered as a child they will not allow it to hold them back from achieving their goals. Additionally as a direct result of this my mum wrote a fiction book for young teenagers about bullying called Run Zan Run (Catherine MacPhail) which was her very first children's book to be published, she now has over 30. This always inspires the children and helps them see that there is life after bullying. In this workshop pupils will be able to purchase a signed copy of Run Zan Run at the end of the workshop.

No Victims, Just Survivors aims to help students: -

  • Understand the effect bullying can have on a child's life.
  • Imagine how it feels to be bullied.
  • Understand the right we all have to be different, to be individuals.
  • Understand that making a success of your life is the best form of revenge.
  • Empower children to rise above the bullies and be the best they can be by showing confidence in themselves and their abilities.
  • Understand that bullying is a sign of weakness not strength.

FLEXIBILITY
Small Steps to Success fully appreciates that schools all work differently therefore we are willing to be flexible with schools depending on their specific wants and needs.

Travelling expenses will be charged at 40p per mile.

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Positive attitudes cut bullying

Emphasising interpersonal qualities and building up esteem and altruism help to deal with the problem. Henry Hepburn reports on new research

Reports of bullying were reduced by a third in a study that used positive psychology with Year 7 pupils - 11- and 12-year-olds - at King James Secondary in Knaresborough, Yorkshire. It helped ensure pupils did not "see bullying around every corner", as one of the researchers put it.

Ian Rivers, a supervisor of the research and head of psychology at Edinburgh's Queen Margaret University, said: "We never asked any negative questions or addressed any negative issues. We asked not 'What's wrong?', but 'How do we make it better?'"

The results, which came to light at the recent conference of Respectme, Scotland's national anti-bullying service, were measured against a control school, which used standard personal and social education approaches but had no lessons on bullying.

The positive psychology approach, thought to be applied to bullying for the first time, led to a "significant reduction" of incidents reported, with a particularly big drop in name-calling. In the control school, there was no significant increase or decrease in bullying.

Pupils in the positive psychology group also reported feeling significantly better about their physical health and their family.

The report said: "Developing their own inter-personal qualities was a key focus in this intervention and may have been particularly rewarding for those pupils (bullies and victims alike) who experienced low self-esteem, and in re-structuring pupils' views towards amiability, altruism and team spirit."

For the study, 206 pupils completed questionnaires about bullying before and after a series of eight weekly 50-minute sessions involving positive psychology, held during PSE lessons.

"Pupils focused on how they could build on what they had in positive interpersonal attributes to address the key issues of bullying," said Andrew Richards, who led the study while at York St John University.

In one session, each pupil designed a poster to depict an "interpersonal quality/strength", which had to include a statement mentioning that quality. "Fairness includes everybody" was one example.

However, the study did not improve pupils' feelings about school, themselves and friends, and there were no significant differences in mental health. The report suggests it was "overly ambitious" to expect discernible mental health improvements in such a short period.

In addition to the positive psychology and control groups, a third group addressed bullying more directly.

"In this school, where we just focused on talking about bullying, the incidence increased because of what we did," Mr Richards said. "It looks like talking about bullying issues increases reports of bullying."

This rise is largely thought to be because pupils' definitions of bullying are often quite narrow before they take part in anti-bullying work. "You can potentially hyper-sensitise pupils to bullying, so that they see bullying around every corner," Mr Richards said.



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