How to help prevent violence in your kids' school
For parents the number one worry when sending kids to school is probably for their safety. It is important for parents that their children get a good education while also being protected from harm. The problem is that a lot of times that harm is not without the school walls but within. Violence in schools is becoming more of a problem and becoming more common. This violence is not always very harmful as it is usually coming from other kids at school. But it can still be a worry to the parent who does not want their child to get hurt in any way.
While you may not ever be able to eliminate violent actions in children you can greatly reduce the problems. It is natural for children to react with violence if they are upset. The unnatural thing is for children to have consistent violent behavior that cannot be controlled. To get rid of violent problems you would first need to focus on individual families, then on individual classrooms and then go broader and focus on the entire school.
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Preventing violence at school by focusing on families-
The first thing to do would be to focus on individual children and their families. If children are not being taught at home how they are supposed to act they will not act correctly at school or be easy to teach. Children need to be taught the importance of not being violent from their parents. Parents need to talk to their children and be sure their children understand how important it is to treat others well. If you want your child to be safe at school you have to make sure that your child is contributing to the safely of everyone else.
Obviously the school cannot go in each home and tell the parents what to teach their children, but they can emphasize the importance of parents teaching their children not to be violent through newsletters etc. They can try to work with the parents in creating a safer school environment. Not every home is perfect and some children may even pick up violent behavior from one or both of their parents. In this case the school would need to do what they think is best for the child and notify authorities if they think the child is being abused.
Preventing violence at school by focusing on classrooms-
The next step to preventing violence at school is to focus on the individual classrooms. There should be certain manners that are expected of the children in classrooms. There should be rule enforced about what will happened if a child does not show respect for one of their peers. Obviously these should not be too harsh or huge, just little things that will help the children start to learn why it is wrong to hurt other people. If certain mannerisms and behaviors are taught in the classroom then it will help control mannerisms and behaviors around the whole school.
Preventing violence at school by focusing on the entire school-
The next thing to do would be to focus on helping the whole school become less violent. This could be done through things such as assemblies. There could be a fun assembly planned that the children would enjoy that would show the importance of treating others kindly. Teaching children in this way greatly influences them and makes them want to be better. If a "superhero" who they admire is nice to people, they will want to be nice to people. You could create that superhero at school and emphasize the importance of not being violent all throughout the school year.
