The Classroom Hero | Full Segment

Okay, boys. Welcome back to our next Daru class. So excited to be able to share this topic with you. Last week, we began a few weeks ago, we began talking about the topic of communication, how important communication skills are, thinking about different forms of communication in our lives. Can anybody think and remember what was the idea that we brought out as far as communication is concerned last time we met? Yeah. >> Describing something. >> So sometimes you can use words to describe something. There was a certain activity that we used to try to bring out the idea. Yeah. >> If you only try to use one type of communication then it's harder. So only one type of communication like just speaking and not using something else sometimes can be harder to convey that message to communicate. Anybody remember something else that we did? >> Hand motions, language. >> Hand motions and language. What else? >> Um drawing. >> Drawing cuz what was the exercise that we did? >> Um like draw a square and talk. So there were there were pictures and you had to try to just with your speech describe what shape and pattern are you seeing on the screen and everyone had to try to draw it for themselves to be able to say like oh and then you hold it up and we compare did you get it right? Who beca who came the closest but how difficult it was when you were only using one form of communication speech. Whereas if you could draw, if you could write, if you could use hand motions, which you weren't allowed to do. You had to keep your hands behind your back when you were describing it last week. If you could do all these other forms of communication, you have a lot more success in conveying your message. And remember, we ended off with the lesson that we have to keep in mind. We can use different forms of communication to make our points more clearly, but we also have to keep in mind what communication are we communicating? whether we realize it or not by those other forms of communication. So leaning way back in your seat or putting your head like you know these are actually communicating messages to a rebby to a teacher to a parent. We have to become self-aware which was the first unit we did all about self-awareness. What messages are we conveying? Are we communicating to the people in our lives? I want to move on now this week to the next unit, the next session in communication and that is using communication for a very important purpose and the topic we're going to be talking about today is bullying. Who can define bullying for me? Yeah. >> A person making fun of >> So one example would be someone making fun of someone else. Yeah. >> Putting someone down to bring yourself up. >> Putting someone down to bring yourself up. That's very well said. We're going to get soon. We're going to elaborate a little bit on what that means. Where is the bully? Why is the bully usually bullying? Yeah. >> Yeah. Um, physically hurting person. >> Potentially physically hurting. Yeah. >> Picking on someone. >> Picking on someone is a way to say it. >> Embarrassing. >> Embarrassing someone. >> Um, saying words like you're no good. >> Okay. So, again, putting the person down with words. >> Um, threatening them because you really think that he's better than you. >> Threats can be a part of it. me >> sometimes. If you're the one that's doing it, make sure you pay attention to this class. Yes. >> Like taking someone's stuff. >> Okay. So, uh affecting other people's stuff, their belongings, taking it. Okay. So, those are all good examples of bullying. The basic idea is that you're harming another person and oftentimes it's being done repetitively over and over and over again. I have a question for you boys. How many people here by a raise of hands have witnessed have observed bullying. Pretty much every single person raising their hand. Now that doesn't mean that there's a lot of bullying going on around you. Could be one person bullying one other person who's the victim, but you all have observed it. The reason I asked that question is not to try to see how much bullying is going on, but actually because if you've all observed it, then you all potentially could be part of this solution. And that's the first point I want to make. What do you boys think is by far the most effective, successful anti-bullying tactic? The best strategy to stop bullying in its tracks, to eliminate bullying. What is the best way to make sure that bullying does not happen? Yeah. >> Have everyone together. >> Everyone together. What were you going to say? >> Um you you ask him to stop and >> so now you're talking about from the victim's perspective. What should you do? Like asking him to stop and stuff. And we're going to get into that. >> You could say that you're going to the principal. >> You could say you're going to you're going to have to tell an adult. Absolutely. Like the principal. Yes. We're going to get to all those ideas, but let's focus more on what he was saying. Yeah. Stand up to him. >> Stand up to him again as the victim. We're going to focus on all of those. That's important. >> Yeah. >> But you can stand up to him as the crowd. >> Ah, okay. As the crowd or the word we want to focus on here is bystander. This is a word that we use when it comes to bullying that is absolutely critical. Yes, there will be sometimes unfortunately bullying in every single school to work with schools across the country and even outside the country. Every school will have incidents and in every incident there's going to be the victim. That's the person who's being bullied. And there's going to be the bystander. That's the person who sees the bullying. He's not the bully. He's not the person being bullied, the victim, but he is observing it. He sees it. He hears it. And the bystander, especially if it's a group of people, have the greatest kak, the greatest strength to influence the environment of the class. What's another place maybe in kish in Torah that we find that people are influenced by their environment by what people around them stand for or don't stand for? Can anyone think of an example in Gumar? Yeah. >> Okay. What do we find by katagel? That the men maybe influenced each other and a large group started to get involved. Thousands of people. But what group do we see didn't get involved byel? >> Do you know? >> The Levim. So they stuck together as a group. I'm sure some Levim got from others to not join. What's another group that didn't get involved in the Agel? >> Yeah. The women gave each other to not get involved. An amazing idea. Once again, you see the positive influence but also potentially the negative influence of those who were serving it. Any other ideas? Any other examples? Yeah. >> Dawson and Okay, good example. Yes. Influencing people potentially by Korak and other places. Yeah. >> Corbin Pak. He said >> it's just a very large gathering of people being mazic each other to do the mitzvah, right? It's like they're taking like the bottles of other >> taking. >> It's like they're basically the >> Okay, there's a lot of people who are bystanders, but we want to talk about how it could influence the group. Yeah. >> By Shimshin. That what? >> When he was being killed like everyone was everyone was around >> and what? >> So that was a moment of influence. Shimshin knocking it down, killing all those enemies was a moment of influence for Claus Israel of his maybe. Yes. But we want to talk about more in a group form. Yeah. >> Getting the Torah >> just receiving the Torah. Matan Torah was a tremendous thing. All the people came together. They were matire themselves. They stood as a group. The group has tremendous kak to influence for the good and for the opposite too. And we have to be aware of that. Which means the greatest single most impactful effective anti-bullying campaign strategy is that the class doesn't stand for bullying and makes it known. That the grade or the school doesn't stand for bullying and makes it known. Meaning the boys, the students. Yeah, the principal could say things, it helps. The mashki, the counselor could say things, it helps. The reban teachers can say things. The parents can get involved. It all helps. It's all great. But the most powerful is if the students themselves say no. What does that mean? It means if you're a bystander and you hear or see one person bullying another person, calling him a really nasty name or even getting physical with him, you walk up to that bully, even just by yourself if you're brave enough. If not, get a little group together. Two, three boys is enough to be powerful. If maybe there's a group that's doing the bullying, maybe get a little bit of a larger group together. Hopefully, the vast majority of the class will be able to get together on this for the good and say, "Hey, stop. What you're doing is not cool. Stop. We We don't like it as a class. Stop." And you make the bully feel silly in what he's doing. It's highly intimidating to the bully and helps him stop the behavior because he says, "Okay, this is not certainly not making me more popular and I'm not comfortable doing this." Now it's an environment that doesn't tolerate bullying amongst the students themselves, the boys themselves. That has the greatest impact. So keep that in mind as we discuss bystander. I want to introduce an abbreviation as a way to think about four ideas. There's more, but four ideas that we can keep in mind as a bystander again by ourselves or even especially as a group. What can we do to help stop bullying around us? Because again, that's our greatest co-ak as a class. The acronym is called stack. S T A C. Here's what it stands for. S stands for steal the show. That means you see someone starting starting to call some names against another person, starting to say some mean things to another person. Steal the show means you jump in and say, "Did you guys understand the toastless Rebby was explaining just before?" Or maybe if it's a different guy, [clears throat] it might make more sense to say, "Did you guys see THE FIELD GOAL LAST NIGHT?" Whatever the content is doesn't matter so much. It's that you're stealing the show. You're changing the topic. By doing that, you interrupt the bullying, which is a great service to the person being bullied. That's one idea. Steal the show. T. Turn it over. That means give it over to an adult. Now, this is important. Do you think every single time somebody annoys or bothers another person, no matter how light or heavy it is, you should always make sure to tell an adult every single time. What do you say? >> Yeah. >> Yes. >> Yes. You should always tell an adult. >> No. >> No. Why not? >> Because then if you say it for every little thing, then the person >> All right. So, let's give an example to make it more clear. Somebody comes over to you. You go to someone and say, "Can I borrow your pen?" And he says, "No, I'm not in the mood of lending it." It's very not nice. Do you tell an adult? >> Yeah. >> No. >> No. What do you say? >> No. >> Why? >> Because it's not serious enough. >> So there need We all agree. >> He's not doing anything necessarily wrong. He's just not doing something good. And sometimes it could be a little wrong. But the point is we all agree there's a certain lightness of just an annoyance that we don't need to tell. Now, can you always tell your parents about anything that happens in your day? Not only can you, you should. In fact, let me just digress for a second. When you go home today and your mother or father, hopefully they haven't given up yet by the time that you're now in middle school, and they ask you, "How was your day in school? Try really hard. Practice this in the car poolool on the way home in your head not to say fine. And then the next question is what did you do today? What did you learn? I don't know. Nothing. I don't remember. Try instead to think of one or two things. You could remember this denu class. This is one thing you could remember for the conversation today. And if your parents did give up and they're not asking you what did you do today? Great. GO OVER TO THEM AND SAY, "MOM, I'd like to tell you what I did in school today. We had a denu class. It was about this. We learned this in sheer. We had an interesting thing in math class. Prepare two or three things. Here's what we did at recess." Your mom might say, "Wait, do you have a fever? What's going on over here?" All of a sudden, you're telling me about your day. And you'll say, "No, I want to try to communicate." Right? We're in communication right now. Communicate a little bit more. So, as a side point, it's good to always try to make sure to communicate with your parents when they want to hear about how was your day. You could always tell your parents anything you want and you should. No restrictions on that. Anything that bothered you, of course, you should tell your parents. But the point is, do you need to run to a principal? Do you need to run to a rebby if someone annoyed you a little bit? So, the answer to that is not exactly black and white. Here's what I mean. There are two categories where turn it over must apply. Okay, you can apply it in other cases, but it must apply. One, it's something significantly significant and physical. So, there's something you're being hurt physically, pinned down, pushed, punched, kicked, all these things. You got to tell someone that is not okay. That is a major boundary crossing. You got to tell someone right away. That's one case. Another case would be an extremely nasty comment. really making fun of you, calling you a terrible name, saying inappropriate stuff, all that stuff, you got to give it over to someone. You got to tell an adult. Rebby, principal, mashia, counselor, parents. But if it's something very light, maybe the boy walks by your knapsack that's on the floor and he just kind of brushes it with his foot clearly purposely. Maybe he co he says calls you like a a little play on your last name a little bit and it doesn't really bother you so much but it's a little annoying and you ask him to stop. So maybe wait to see if he stops. You don't necessarily have to tell an adult. But there's another category where you do have to turn it over. Even if it's light, if it happens again and again and again and you try to ask him to stop and again and again and it's relentless, then even light things can start to hurt a lot. It's actually true. If you like punch someone in their arm lightly, but you keep doing it a long time, it starts to actually potentially make a black and blue mark even because it's relentless. Same thing with words. Even if the words are relatively light, if it's consistent and repetitive and it's for a long time, a number of days in a row, and it's not stopping, you got to tell someone because that could really hurt a person. Just like one time if it's something strong and physical or particularly nasty verbally. Okay. So that's turn it over. You have a question? >> Um but also if you say like go to Robert Schwarz or the principal every single time there's a little thing then um they're not going to let you come back every single time. >> Okay. Sometimes if you overload the principle and you're coming to them every day, they feel like, "Okay, one second. We need to create some amount of resilience, some amount of separation and time. How often?" Again, if it's big things and it's happening every day for some reason, you got to go. But hopefully those things are going to be taken care of right away with the parents involved and everyone involved. Yeah, good point. Okay. Yeah. Last question for now. >> But sometime sometimes the bully has to stop even when the parents are principal. >> Yes. Yes, we're going to talk about that. Excellent question. Sometimes these things are not enough. We're going to get there. But to finish off what a bystander can do, what's S? >> Start the show. >> Steal the show. What's T? >> Turn it over. >> Turn it over. A is accompany others. Accompany others. Is a accompany others means that you want to make sure to provide company to the victim. What's the feeling that a victim of bullying generally feels right when he's being bullied and right after he gets being bullied? What feeling is the victim usually feeling? >> Yeah. >> No one cares. >> No one cares about me. >> I'm all >> You might feel some rage and anger, but also I'm what? feel awkward. >> Awkward and >> like a nobody >> alone. I'm all alone. >> No one's there for me. So, what could you do as a bystander? You can go up to that victim and say after it's like, let's say it just finished and now you noticed it, you go up to him and you say, "Hey, don't listen to him. He's being silly. Don't listen to him. What he's saying does not make sense at all. And by the way, at recess today, we're putting a game together. Come join us. I'm having some guys over to study and do come over. Invite including him. That is directly helping the feeling that he's feeling of alone of loneliness. Accompany others. Be there for the victim. And lastly, so what's s? >> Steal the show. >> Turn it over. >> Turn it over. accomp >> accompany others. And lastly, coaching compassion. That means we want to be able to tell the bully, hey, stop. That's what we really began with. Especially if you could do it in group form. Bring a whole group together. Approach the bully. Tell the bully in group form, "Hey, what you're doing is not cool. It's not okay. We don't like it. It it's it's destroying our class. Stop." and you walk away. You're coaching compassion bully. You got to have some compassion. You got to stop with this mean behavior. Coaching compassion. One last time. >> Steal the show. >> Turn over. Accompany others. >> Coaching compassion. >> Coaching compassion. That's right. So, we want to remember these four tactics as a bystander. There are more things that you can do as well. And now we're gonna also talk about what to do if you're the victim of bullying. Before we get there, you had a question. >> Yeah. >> Um, but also the person could like say something, but you might not want to say anything cuz like we could be going through something >> like let's say you know the fact is that the bullyy's going through something. >> That would be an excellent thing to say. You have to be careful with lush and hurry. You don't want to start revealing secrets that you might know. But to say in general, I think he's just dealing with difficult stuff right now. Don't pay attention to what he's saying. He's just having a hard time right now. I think, you know, he's like, well, what exactly? Like, I don't know. Just I think he's just having a hard time. Absolutely. That's a great piece of information to share if it's true, >> right? In that case, that would be great. Absolutely. When you when you coach compassion and you go to the bully as a group or even as an individual to say, "Stop. It's not cool." It doesn't have to be with a meanness, just a firmness and a confidence. You got to stop what it could be very nice. Hey, you got to stop what you're saying. It's so not nice to him. I'm not sure you realize, but you're being really mean to him. It's hurting him. You got to stop. And if if his response is, "Oh, okay. Thank you. Beautiful." But if his response is, "I know. Oh, yeah. It's hurting him." You know, "Oh, great. Here I go." Well, then you got to get a little bit more firm. Maybe bring in a few more people to the group. make sense. Yeah. >> Um I think maybe we should also add a K so it can be spelled correctly and K would stand for karate. >> Ah I'm so happy you brought that up because we're going to talk about this in the victim. We'll talk about it now as far as the victim and the bystander. Should you use K? He's saying let's add a K. Now it's spelled correctly as stack and we it it stands for karate. Now, first of all, if you know anything about karate, karate is all about defensive posturing and not offensive, which means you're not doing any attacking unless you're attacked. Um, so I'm not sure karate maybe there's a different letter for a different form of fighting or whatever, but but not not karate. Um, but but let's just address the idea. So, let's get rid of that. Let's just address the idea of should you get physical with him? The answer is no. We'll elaborate on that a little bit when we get to the victim. Should the victim get physical or not? But the answer is generally no, but we'll get to that soon. Yeah. >> Um, but if you're coaching compassion, sometimes you might get bullied back. >> Yes, there is a risk. That's excellent that you brought that up. As a bystander, why would a bystander not want to get involved? Because one second, Barak Hashem, I'm not getting bullied. I feel bad for him that he is, but I'm not. >> I don't want to get involved. If I get involved, he start bullying me. So, first of all, if you're in a group, that should be less of a concern because if 12 people out of 20 in the class go up to this person and say, "Stop." Much less of a concern. Second of all, even if you're by yourself, you're right. There's a risk. And we wouldn't blame someone for not getting involved. But if you have the courage to say something, you'll have hopefully the environment others who will be the bystander for you if necessary. Right? That's why we're talking about creating this environment in the classroom and in the grade of not tolerating bullying. Does that make sense? It's a great point. Yeah. >> What if there are no bystanders? >> Sometimes it happens in private and there no bystanders and this wouldn't apply. The victim can potentially tell other people, hey, could you look out for this? Could you help me out? But yeah, we have to deal with each situation in of itself. In many many cases, there's going to be some bystanders. Not every case. It's true. We have We're going to talk in a minute about what should the victim of bullying do to help himself. That's going to be the next part of the class. Yeah. >> If someone's like bullying you on your way home from school and no one sees and he's doing it physically, shouldn't you like defend yourself? >> Yes, we're going to get to that. That's all within the victim side of things. Okay. So, this we just wanted to talk about if you're the bystander. Now, let's transition over a lot of your questions on what if you're the victim. Maybe there are no bystanders. Maybe there are bystanders, but they're not coming to help. So, the bullying has happened and you're the victim of it. What can you do to help yourself? So, two options that I want to share with you today. Number one, think to yourself, does this person who's bullying me seem like a person I may be able to talk to to ask him to stop? If the answer is definitely not, which sometimes happens, then we'll have to move on to option two that I'm going to give you in a minute. But if the answer is yes, I think I might be able to tell him to stop. I think it might work. Then here's what you want to do. You want to tell him to stop. But we want to start with a concept called an I statement. An I statement means that you focus on your feelings, not his actions. Let me give you an example. I walk up to the bully and I say, "You are being so mean by calling me that name. You've now invited a fight." No, I'm not. You deserve it. It's not so mean. As opposed to It's hurting my feelings deeply when you call me that name. Stop. Or if you don't want to make yourself so vulnerable and so emotional, you could just simply say, "I really don't like it when you call me that name. Please stop now." Firm, short, focusing on I don't like it. I don't like it. What's he going to say? That's not true. You do like it. There's nothing to argue about. If you focus on his actions, what you're doing, you're a Russia. YOU'RE NOT SUPPOSED TO DO YOU'RE DON'T YOU real he could just start arguing no it's because of this you're wrong I am allowed but if you just say I don't like what you're doing you want to add in it's really bothering me or not but I don't like what you're doing I need you to stop now please that's one second I'll take questions in a minute that's the statement the I statement and then there are two conditions to make this work one you want to be in private I'll explain what that means in a minute. And there's a second condition of walk away. Okay, so those are the two things. Let's talk about that. In private doesn't mean you have to be in a private room when you say this to the bully. It means you want to be out of earshot. You don't want the bully to have an audience because if you walk up to that bully and he has two or three of his close friends around him and you say, "Hey bully, I don't like what you're doing. Please stop." Now, when you call me that name, I don't like it. Stop. When you kick my knapsack, I don't like it. Stop, please. Now, clear, short, to the point. If he has two or three friends around him, he's going to feel like, I got to put on a show. I got to save face, we call it. I got to save my reputation. So, he's going to want to say to the victim, "Oh, yeah." And then like, "Call you the name right there." And then the two friends laugh. You know, sometimes when somebody makes a joke in a class, the whole class laughs and like the kid feels really good. But sometimes, imagine if I was the kid and imagine in the middle of class, I like raise my hand and I say something funny, right? like, "Oh, yeah. Well, that's not true because of this and this." And instead of everyone laughing, which makes me feel good, the whole class is just like, >> totally awkward silence. The person feels really silly with what he did. He probably won't do it again. So, the point is, if the bully feels like he's going to get a laugh from an audience, a reaction, you're probably going to lose in trying to get him to stop by telling him to stop. What you want to do is when you're 10t away from other people on one side of the room from the other side of the room, that's when you quietly walk up to him. I really don't like it when you call me that name. When you do that thing, please stop now. I don't like it. And then the second condition, so there's no audience. Second condition, walk away. Don't do this. Hey bully, I really don't like when you call me that name. Please stop now. What's your response? How would you like to reply? This is not a discussion. This is not a debate. I don't like it. I need you to stop. I really don't like what you're doing when you call me that name. Please stop now. Walk away. Walk away. He might scream after you. Yeah, but you just shrug your shoulders and walk away. Okay, so that's the first technique. If you think you can speak to him, go ahead and try it. If it works, great. If it doesn't work, we'll move on to option two, which is going to be a whole different approach than speaking to him. It's going to be how do you react when you are being bullied? what's your reaction going to be? And that's going to have a specific idea to it. But before we move on to that, yeah, >> could also like have confidence in people and and like and like be nice to them cuz when you're nice sometimes they end up like make him stop. >> Interesting. Sometimes just being a little extra nice to the bully makes him feel like a little more silly that he's being so mean to you. like say to him, >> "Okay, I [clears throat] don't like when you call me those stuff, but if it makes you feel better, then go ahead and do it." >> Okay, that's going to get into the reaction. What kind of reaction should you have? And it's very much along the lines of what you're saying. That's excellent. >> Say you go for the person, you tell them that you don't like it, walk away, scream, I don't care. Next day does the same thing. >> Yeah. Yeah. So then speaking didn't work and we have to move on to the next idea. Right. This is option number one. This is option number two. If you think option number one's not going to work, move straight on to option number two. If you think it might work, try it. If it works, great. If not, move on to option two. Let's talk about option two for a second. Quick quick question. Yeah. >> If you talk about your feeling and tell you don't like it and he goes and tells other people how I said that I don't like it and he embarrasses you. >> Yeah. He could even he could bully you more with the speaking. You're absolutely right. He could say, "Guys, come over here." You know what he just said? He said, "I should stop." Haha. and he tells you that, oh, we went to a red for little thing that I did and this and this. >> Yep. >> And in those cases, we're going to explore option two. But of course, if nothing's working at some point, no matter what level of severity it is, like we said before, especially if it's repeating, and if it's severe right away, you got to do turn it over, give it to the adult, right? One more review. Spotlight. >> Steal the show. Steal the spotlight. Yeah. >> Turn it over. >> Accompany others. >> Compassion. Coaching. Coaching. Compassion. Good. Okay. So, one second. Let's just get through this and then I'll take your question. What should your Now we're up to the point of we tried all that. It's not working. What should your reaction be when the bully bullies you? This is really important. The way to answer that question is what is what is the reason many bullies bully? Why are they bullying? We kind of touched on this at the very beginning of the class in the back. Yeah. >> To get attention. >> Um like he's like he's facing something like >> something difficult. >> Yeah. And he's like >> Yeah. >> He genuinely doesn't like you. >> He just doesn't like the person. Sure. to get more popular. >> Cuz what? >> To get more popular. >> To get more popular. To get attention. Yeah. >> To when? Because he feels that thing about himself. So he tells you >> he feels that thing about himself all the way in the back. Yeah. >> Something's happening at home. >> Maybe something's happening at home that's making him feel bad >> to put you down and bring himself up. >> Oh, a good visual for that is he's feeling down and out about himself for some reason. So in order to shove you down and step on top of you, he raises himself up. But what a cruel, vicious, terrible way to make himself feel better about himself. But we have to understand that's where it's coming from. It's coming from him wanting to make himself feel better about himself because there's something that he doesn't feel so good about inside of himself, which ultimately means he's trying to grab power for himself. He wants to feel more powerful and get a reaction out of you. This is something that has been written about. This is an incredible idea to think about when you're dealing with a bully. If he's trying to get power, it means he can cause you to react. That means he says something to you, a mean comment, and you crumble on the floor and cry. Haha, look how powerful I am. Or you run away, tell on him, and he gets in trouble. Look how powerful I am. I was able to cause you to get so upset. You went and told on me. Even though it's a negative consequence to him, even that makes him feel power. So we have to think to ourselves, how do we deflate that power? How do we make it that that power just doesn't feel like he's getting that power anymore? What tactic can we take? >> If you ignore him, then he just thinks >> ignoring is the right is a good idea. But let's define two different types of ignoring. One type of ignoring is he calls me a name and I go like this. Do you guys hear anyone talking to me right now? I don't hear anyone. Is there someone even over there? Like silent treatment. That is a reaction even though you're not saying anything to him. But that's a clear reaction of I'm very bothered by what you're doing. Look at what you're right. The right type of ignoring the word I like to use is more more called indifference. I'm indifferent. I don't care. I don't care what you say. It makes no difference to me. Indifference. Then he feels like, "Oh my gosh, I'm not getting a reaction from the victim." >> That is something that's powerful in terms of taking away his feeling of power. So what would that look like? He calls me a name and I just kind of shrug my shoulders. Okay, whatever you say. And walk away. Like who cares? Let me give you a muscle. Just put your hands down and we'll go to questions in a minute. Let me give you a mushel, a visual to help you with this because sometimes it's really going to hurt. How do you pretend like it's not bothering you? So, sometimes I want you all to close close your eyes for a second and imagine the face of a baby. Close your eyes. It could be a younger brother or sister. It could be a niece or nephew. It can be a baby that you saw on the outside of a diaper box. It doesn't matter. You can make up the baby face, but like a little six-month-old baby's head. Okay, picture that head in your mind. Okay, open your eyes. Now, imagine there's a person bullying. I'm not going to say you cuz there's a person bullying someone. What I would tell that person is, oh, he's bullying you. Say it's a middle schooler bullying another middle schooler. Imagine that baby head being swapped out on top of the shoulders of the middle school boy's body. And now it's a middle school boy's body with a baby's head on top. Pretty weird visual. Why would I tell you to imagine that? Because think about the following case. I go to my friend's house and he's like, "You got to see my baby. You got to come see the baby. It's so cute. Come see the baby. I say fine. I come and I take a look at the baby and it's very cute baby. So I look at the baby and the baby looks up at me. It's like one years old, not talking any English yet. And it looks up at me and says, "You're ugly." I'm like, "What? What is And the father's like his first words. He's talking so early. He's a genius. What would my feelings be? Would I be like, "Oh, called me ug." Or would I be like, "Wait, LET ME TAKE OUT MY CAMERA AND VIDEO THIS. MAYBE WE COULD GET HIM TO SAY IT again because it's just a baby. The words mean nothing." That's the visual. Somebody's calling you names. You imagine that baby's head on his body and that's doing the talking. It means nothing to me. It doesn't bother me. It gives me a little chuckle even. It doesn't bother me. Now, again, it's not really that case. It really is someone your age, so it does hurt. I get it. But if you could even act indifferent, like it doesn't bother you. You know what starts to happen? The bully starts to get more intense and more extreme with the bullying because he's losing grip with his power. You're not reacting. You're not caring. Every time he says it, you're just like, "Okay." Some sometimes people like to say, "Okay, thank you, I guess." And you walk away. [snorts] And it's all about how you say it, right? It's not, "Um, thank you, I guess." cuz that's like I'm bothered. It's more you have to do a little bit of an acting job or maybe you could really come to the point that it doesn't bother you and you simply say okay thanks and you move on and you get busy with other things. You go back to a book you're reading. you go out to play and he's like, "Wow, it's not affecting." But he might increase the intensity at first cuz he's losing his grip and power. And then eventually it stops because he's not gaining what he's setting out to gain, some sort of power over you through your reaction. So indifference, your reaction, not caring at all about what he's doing. Remember the muscle with the baby? That is what we want to focus on. It doesn't bother me even if it does. Now again, if it's particularly nasty or intense or it's not, but it's going on for a long time despite you doing this or it's getting physical and pretty serious, it's hurting you, all those what's that? >> Turn it over. Give it to an adult 100%. Even if it's just slightly bothering you, always talk to your parents about what's going on in school. 100%. So keep all that in mind. But these are the tactics we can use to try to help ourselves if Sham were the victim. Those are the things that we want to try to keep in mind both as bystander, which is the most effective way to get rid of bullying in a school, in a classroom, in a grade, and as victim. the different ways to speak it out with I statements to make sure that we talk about it's bothering me. I don't like it. Not what you're doing is bad because then he can argue and private just means no audience, no crowd around, nobody around, right? That's all private means. So that there's no audience for him to get laughter from. And you walk away when you say that quick eye statement. Doesn't matter if he's screaming after you. drop the seed, plant the seed, and then move on. And finally, if the speaking doesn't work, the indifference, whatever doesn't bother me, and you walk away and keep that up for a few days, hopefully it ends. If it doesn't, you always got to get bring adults into it. Hopefully, your friends will come and help you one last time. >> I will now take questions. At what point are you able to get physical? >> Great question. So now the question becomes, is there ever room to get physical with the bully? >> What if the bully is saying really nasty things? Should you get physical with him? The answer is no. Never if it's just verbal. However, there's one exception. Let me tell you before I get to the exception. You know what often happens when when somebody pushes another person, he's like, "What? How dare you? You can't push me." And he goes to push him back. Let's just picture it in slow motion right now. So Ruvane the bully pushes Shimon. Shim's the victim and Shimon's like, "What? How dare you?" And he decides not to tell him you shouldn't do that and then to tell an adult cuz that's a pretty serious physical thing you got to tell an adult. Instead of that, Shim decides I'm going to take justice to my own hands and push Ruvane back. Okay, here's what usually happens. I don't know why, but this is what I see usually happens. Shim, slow motion gets ready to come push Ruvane back because he deserves it. And as his hands make contact with his chest and he's about to shove him to the ground, the door opens, in comes the Manahel's head to check on how the class is going. And at that moment, he sees Shim push Ruvane onto the ground. Uh, excuse me, Shim, come with me right now. Now, even if Shim can figure out a way to explain and prove and cameras and other things that I was only reacting, still he can get in trouble for it. And also the manal is going to react more to the thing he saw with his own eyes than the thing he didn't see depending on what the circumstances are. WHICH MEANS POTENTIALLY SHIM'S NOT ONLY THE ONE WHO GOT pushed first, but now Shimon's getting in trouble. Very often that happens. It's not It's always a good idea to avoid getting physical at all costs, but there's an exception where you have no choice. For example, shalom, the bully is pinning the victim down on the ground and the victim can't escape. He shouldn't just lie there and be like, um, are there any adults around who can help me? He should do everything he needs to do to get out from that pin. He might need to push, you know, punch a little bit. I'm not advocating for any of that, but he can't let himself just continue to be pinned down on the ground. Similarly, if he's being grabbed, right, he might need to like kind of push his arms away. So, you're getting physical to release yourself so that not so that you could turn around and get him back physically so you can run away. And in fact, that's always the advice, by the way, even for stronger people in your adult lives. That's always the advice. Don't engage in physical force with another person. It only adds to the risk and makes it potentially more dangerous. So we have to keep that in mind and think about that. It's the same thing here in school. Obviously baram we're not dealing with those types of scenarios. But when it comes to bullying unless you're stuck and you need to release yourself, free yourself from the bully, nothing physical. Yeah. >> Say you're a bystander and someone's being kidn [clears throat] What I would say is scream out to get an adult to help cuz it's always better if the adult does it. But yes, if you see that a person is being pained and hurt in a stuck position, you do what you need to do to pull the person off of him. Right? So, we're not saying, "Oh, great. I have an excuse now to punch him in the face." No, that's not what we're saying. We're saying have three guys come and pull him off and that should be sufficient in the vast majority of cases. But yes, as a bystander, again, if someone's stuck pinned, they can't run away. If they can run away and there's a fight going on and they're both actively participating in it, run and go get someone, you can um from behind like kind of each guy could be held back. You know, you sometimes see that at sporting events sometimes where they seemingly like in baseball aren't really going to fight but um they're making a point like hold me back hold me back type of thing. It's funny sometimes. It looks looks to me like that a little bit sometimes. But either way, yes, trying to stop people from engaging in physical fights can be an a case where you can get a slightly physical. We're talking about just holding someone back, but we're not talking about really trying to fight physically with another person. Great question. That's how I would deal with generally speaking nothing physical and the rare exception where it could be a little bit physical. Excellent. Okay, so this these are the ideas that I wanted to share with you in regards to bullying. It's a really important topic. This is just the beginning of the conversation. We're just opening up the discussion right now. We touched on this a little bit back in sixth grade. If you remember, we're really getting more heavily into it here in seventh grade. This is all about what we want to try to learn about in these DAU classes. Obviously, if any of you have questions about specific circumstances relating to bullying or anything, you know, you can find me in my office. You can make an appointment with me. We can talk. You can catch me in the hallway. We can talk. You have your wonderful Rebby here as well who's who heard the whole class together with us and he can be involved and help you. You have the manal and of course you have your parents and hashem we won't even have to use these tactics because we won't have the bullying all together but just in case we do we have these ideas and we should only have Thank you boys so much. Enjoy your recess. [music] >> [music]