Mentor Away Bullying is a series of free video lessons created over time by a career teaching couple. Having taught for ~30 years in variety settings—including California, Africa, China, the Middle East, India and SE Asia—one thing became clear: the problem of schoolyard bullying is as widespread as it is stubbornly resistant to remedy.
Mentor Away Bullying (©2018) is designed toward individual remediation (i.e. the restoration or re-discovery of a kinder nature that has somewhere disconnected) rather than community prevention—this is why Mentor Away Bullying is a unique tool and a frequently neglected angle of approach to the problem of bullying. Prevention programs are abundant, and despite mixed data on their overall effectiveness they no doubt do help nice kids stay nice and become even more supportive and protective of others, and less nice kids to observe that their behavior may need reconsideration (or greater stealth).
Children often get punished for their unacceptable choices (bullying behaviors are not acceptable and that message must be conveyed—agreed) but do not often get sufficient nor focused help with learning how to make better, healthier choices. Punishment unaccompanied by education, we believe, is itself a form of bullying (and in no world can bullying a bullier yield a favorable result!). Children do need the prevention programs, they need the school’s adult role models, AND they need caring adults to confront them about what’s wrong: a developing tendency to rudeness, cruelty, exclusion, mocking. These caring adults must offer fresh perspectives for making healthier choices: self-respect, other-respect, kindness, inclusion, tolerance and humility. This is not only for the sake of their targets but also for the sake of the bulliers themselves, who are doing damage to their own well-being when they hurt others.
Fortunate youngsters have an adult in their life who is willing and available to walk them through the early steps of their transition to greater self- and other-respect. This adult may either have the skill set to do so or have access to a ‘map and compass’ of instructions and materials to guide them both safely through the early stages of the process, i.e. this course, which offers perspectives, terms and concepts for immediate and ongoing consideration & discussion. For those children and their adult mentor this manual serves as an accompaniment to those video lessons…that “compass” and “map”, as it were. This manual is provided as a supporting tool for caring adults (i.e. “mentors”, “teachers”, “tutors”, “family friends”, “guides”, “leaders” …refer to these wonderful people as you wish) who have offered their time to a concerned parent toward helping lead a wonderful but misguided child away from observed bullying tendencies. These materials and exercises solidify the learning and expand upon it, and provide explanation and talking points for the adult mentor her-/him-self.
The mentor-guide for these anti-bullying lessons might be a family friend, a teacher or tutor etc. For the health of family relationships and out of concern for his/her progress in the course, we tend to discourage parents from serving in the role of the child’s mentor, and advise them to seek assistance through school administration, online tutoring services, family friends, and/or student teachers or substitute teachers. And remember…mentoring can be done online, so proximity need not be a problem.
The video lessons are completely free for whomever would like to use them as a foundation for working with a child. While written for kids at a developmental age range of 10 – 15 years, they are appropriate for children of all ages and provide a foundation for further conversation between mentor and child.
The videos are freely available to all interested viewers on our YouTube channel.