Respectme

Mr Matthews had noticed that Peter (14) seemed to have few friends at school and that on some occasions other pupils in the class had made very derogatory comments to him.  Mr Matthew had always chastised the pupils and let them know that it was unacceptable.  He had also tried to raise this with Peter on a number of occasions but Peter was always very reluctant to talk. 

Peter now has a different Biology teacher but appeared at Mr Matthew’s door at 3.30pm last Friday.  Despite being eager to get home, Mr Matthews was surprised and pleased to see him and invited him in to talk.  Peter obviously had something on his mind and told Mr Matthews that he needed him to speak to the other pupils in the class again because they were still ‘picking on’ him.  Mr Matthews told Peter that he wanted to help and that he would be writing some details down if that was okay.  Peter agreed and went on to tell Mr Matthews some quite upsetting details about what the other pupils said to him and how it made him feel.  This only seemed to happen in classes where the teachers didn’t intervene and Peter seemed to be really aware of this.  Mr Matthews tried to find out more about his mood and how he was coping.  Peter told him that his parent’s were aware of this and had wanted to come up to the school but he had begged them not to, they didn’t like coming to the school anyway and he knew it would just make it worse.  Peter then changed his mind and decided that it would be better if Mr Matthews could just speak to the other teachers instead of talking to the pupils.  Mr Matthews could see the potential difficulty with this but made a promise to Peter that he would do what he could.

Mr Matthews promised Peter that he would come and find him in the middle of the week and let him know what he had done.  He told Peter that he was going to have to let Mrs Rasheed, the Head of Year know and that she would probably want to check in with Peter.  He seemed happy with this and very relieved that someone seemed to be able to help him.

Mr Matthews kept his promise and arranged a meeting with Peter, Mrs Rasheed and himself for the following Tuesday.  Together they told Peter that a memo had already been sent round all of his teachers telling them to be extra aware of all verbal bullying and harassment in their classes, to intervene at once and use ‘Concern’ forms if need be to bring it to the attention of the guidance staff. 

They also told Peter that they had referred him to the school youth worker for some help on dealing with the impact of bullying, that they would write to let his parents know what was going on and thanked him for bringing it to their attention.  The teachers also spoke with the Senior Management Team who were already in the process of arranging extra training for staff on the next in-service day on identifying bullying as well as developing a plan for reviewing the anti-bullying policy.