Working to Create a Bully Free School: Social or Relational Aggression

This year we will continue to work with the Olweus Bullying Prevention Program. Our Anti-Bullying Rules are:

1. We will not bully others. 
2. We will help students who are bullied.
3. We will include students who are left out.
4. If we know that somebody is being bullied, we will tell an adult at school and an adult at home.

Bullying is damaging to students not only physically, but also emotionally. This year I would like to focus on  educating students on, and providing strategies to prevent, a type of bullying that is known as social or relational aggression. Often this type of bullying is associated with girls, but boys are also affected by this type of aggression.

Dr. Laura Martocci, professor at Wagner College, refers to this type of bullying as "emotional violence."

According to the Ophelia Project website http://www.opheliaproject.org/ :

Relational aggression encompasses behaviors that harm others by damaging, threatening to damage or manipulating one's relationships with his/her peers, or by injuring one's feelings of social acceptance.

For example:

•  Purposefully ignoring someone when angry (giving the "silent treatment")
• Spreading rumors about a disliked classmate
• Telling others not to play with a certain classmate as a means of retaliation.

Please check out these websites and books for additional information about social/relational aggression and bullying:

Olweus
The Ophelia Project
Relational Aggression
Hope House Online
Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolecent Girls by Mary Pipher
Queen Bees and Wannabees: Helping Your Daughter Survive Cliques, Gossip, Boyfriends, and the New Realities of Girl World by Rosalind Wiseman
Odd Girl Out: The Hidden Culture of Aggression in Girls   by Rachel Simmons