Which Way to Stop the Drama?
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Teacher Tips
Be sure to spend time helping the students and teacher get to know one another. Use activities that range from knowing each others’ names to knowing things about the others’ interest, talents, and families. Kagan Publishing and Professional Development (http://www.kaganonline.com/) has a set of activities on SmartCards called "Classbuilding" and "Teambuilding" that will help the students and teacher get to know one another. The goal is very specifically for all of the students to know each other well – not just for the teacher to know the individual students. When the students and teacher know one another, they are more respectful and caring of each other and more likely to tolerate each others’ differences and find solutions to differences they do not understand.
If you want to have students create a web-based version of the book, go to "Choose Your Own Adventure: A Hypertext Writing Experience" (listed under Resources) for assistance and web-based examples. This site includes a rubric for web-based stories and a self-assessment set of questions, among other assistance for a similar project.
This is an excellent writing experience and you may want to team up with the English and language arts teachers to support the writing while you support the conflict resolution content.
The Safe Schools Coalition website (also listed under Resources) has valuable information, as do many other websites about bullying. Some websites provide access to free questionnaires that might give insight into any problem at your school and a talking place to discuss bullying.
