Bullying Prevention

What bullying actually means here

Article 4 defines it with real precision, and the precision matters — it tells you what to look for. Bullying is conduct by an individual or a group that is:

Which track a case goes down

• 生對生student to student
  The school's bullying prevention committee route: a review sub-group decides whether to accept the case, then a handling team runs either 調和 or a formal investigation.
• 師對生staff to student
  A different procedure entirely. In schools up to senior high, it runs through the process governing teacher discipline and dismissal, not through the bullying committee.
• 性霸凌sexual bullying
  Leaves this regulation altogether. Article 4 routes conduct that amounts to sexual bullying to the Gender Equity Education Act — Module 5's procedure, Module 5's much larger penalties.

You are not expected to work out which track applies. Your action is identical in all three cases: tell the designated person within 24 hours and let the school route it. Knowing the tracks exist simply stops you from concluding that something “isn't really bullying” and therefore isn't worth mentioning.

調和 — the facilitated dialogue route

The 2024 amendment put a restorative option at the center of student-to-student cases. A neutral handling team facilitates dialogue between the two sides to build mutual understanding, resolve the conflict and agree a way forward. Two things to understand about it:

First, it requires the consent of both parties — it cannot be imposed. Second, and more important for you: 調和 is a formal process run by the handling team. It is not a conversation you facilitate. Sitting two students down yourself to “talk it out” is not a small version of this procedure — it is an intervention that can leave a target feeling forced to forgive, and it can compromise the real process before it starts.

The investigation rules that affect you

Interviews with the parties, witnesses and related staff are fully audio- or video-recorded by the school, and those being interviewed may not record on their own. If you are interviewed as a witness, expect this and do not attempt to record.

Confidentiality is legally binding: those under the duty who leak identifying information may be punished under the Criminal Code or other law. In practice this means you do not tell the class, you do not tell other parents, you do not discuss it in the staff room, and you do not post about it — including in the abstract, including without names.

What not to do

• Do not investigate
  Interviewing students, asking the class who saw what, or collecting statements damages a real investigation and can breach confidentiality before it even opens.
• Do not mediate
  See above. Facilitated dialogue is a formal process with consent requirements, not an ad hoc chat at the back of the room.
• Do not confront the family
  Neither family. Contact with parents is the school's, through the homeroom teacher.
• Do not address it to the whole class
  “Some people in this class need to be kinder” tells the target that you know and are not acting, and tells everyone else who it is about.

What you should do — including the parts nobody asks you for

Notice. Bullying happens where teachers are not: corridors, group chats, the moment before class starts, and the free-forming of pairs. An English lesson with movement and pair work is one of the very few settings where an adult can see the actual social structure of a class. Who nobody chooses. Who goes quiet when a particular student speaks. Who is always the one left over.

Write it down. Dates, what you saw, in plain factual terms. Six weeks of small entries is far more useful to an investigation than one dramatic incident, and it is exactly the evidence of persistence that the definition turns on.

Report it. Within 24 hours of the point at which you suspect it — not at the point you can prove it.

Change what is yours to change. While the process runs, you still control seating, grouping and who works with whom. Assigning pairs rather than letting students choose is not a small thing: for a child who is never chosen, it is the difference between a lesson they dread and a lesson they can sit through.

One thing to do this week

In your next lesson with each class, let students form pairs freely and simply watch for ten seconds. Note who is left standing, and who ends up together only because nobody else took them. You do not need to act on it immediately — but you will know something about that class that its own homeroom teacher may not.