ACTIVITIES RELATED TO THE ROLE OF EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE IN PREVENTING BULLYING
What is bullying?
Bullying is a pervasive and harmful behavior that affects the victim’s life broadly and derived from power imbalance. It is generally the bully’s will to satisfy themselves and demonstrate a superiority against the other. The outcomes to this major issue among all ages and fields are devastating and last for life without seeking help and ways to deal with it. Those outcomes may be depression and anxiety, feeling of loneliness and isolation, sleep problems, loss of interest in activities and academic decay, or even may last with suicide. Kids who bully are also leaning towards violance and abuse in older ages. There are many efficient ways of preventing bullying and one of them is emotional intelligence.
Emotional Intelligence:
Emotional intelligence is the ability to perceive, comprehend and interpret one’s own and others emotions. It also involves identifying and expressing them efficiently. It involves empathy, which means understanding and relating to others feelings. Empathy plays a crucial role in taking a step in solving the problem of bullying.
Empathy: When individuals have a strong understanding and bonding with others, they are much less likely to engage in bullying behaviors and cause harm. Individuals who lack empathy may not be competent in seeing the impact of their behavior on others and feel remorse or regret. People with empathy skills
are also more likely to stand up for the unjust and protect the “at risk”.
Empathy can be practised through acitivities such as roleplaying, active listening, story telling, group discussions and educational games. Alongside with empathy, regulating one’s emotions and communicating effectively are also parts of emotional intelligence. By learning how to control and safely direct your emotions and practice it with activities like taking a deep breath and mindfulness, you can be more equipped to avoid harmful behavior and cease them if you witness. Furthermore, by communicating assertively, you can express your thoughts and demands in a respectful and peaceful way.
ACTIVITY 1
A) Prepare scripts about hypothetical bullying scenarios and how to react to them and the importance of emotional intelligence. Put characters that lack emotional intelligence in some scenarios. Give roles to each person and let them study. They can improvise if necessary.
B) Prepare the stage and environment. Let everyone act their role in an effective and educational way.
C)
At the end of every play, ask the audiance what lessons they have learned and comment on their behavior. Ask them to detect the bad behavior and explain how to correct it.
ACTIVITY 2
A)
Form a circle which everyone is facing each other.
B)
Participants take turns sharing one of their experiences-a bullying experience, their fears or challenges they’ve faced. Everyone listens with support and empathy and shares what or who they think is wrong, what they should have done and/or should do in the future. This helps build trust and empathy among pupils.
ACTIVITY 3
A)
Prepare some bullying scenarios and draw a large map, divided into four sections labeled “see”, “hear”, “think” and “feel”.
B)
Give different bullying scenarios to pupils and let them fill in each section based on how the victim might see, hear, think and feel.
This helps students to see things from other peoples perspectives and consider their feelings.
ACTIVITY 4
A)
Divide students into pairs.
B)
Ask them to tell each other about a time they felt bullied and mistreated.
After listening, the other paired pupil retells the story from the other story character’s perspective and what they didn’t consider.
This helps students to put themselves in others shoes and understand the way people act.
ACTIVITY 5
A)
Hand out papers and pencils.
B)
Ask the students to imagine an ideal community which its citizens help each other when in need, always are kind to others and put themselves in others places, and draw that imagination.
This helps pupils to improve their imagination and take a step into making the community they imagine real, starting with changing their own behavior and create a culture of kindness and respect.