How could I respond when students in my class tell me about incidents which have occurred online?
Contents
- Review your schools’ behaviour policies and procedures
- The Co-LATE model is helpful when talking to students about personal issues, including relationship difficulties and cyber bullying behaviour. The acronym Co-LATE guides the user to consider the following five actions during a conversation with students experiencing some difficulties:
- Co nfidentiality: be clear with students about when you may need to talk to other adults about the content of their conversation (for example, duty of disclosure)
- L isten: Active listening shows the students you are interested in what they have to say and enables you to confirm you have understood the details of the conversation accurately. Ask open-ended questions eg: “tell me more about what happened next…“
- A cknowledge their concerns: in the form of paraphrasing students’ concerns and their reaction to the situation, for example – “that sounds pretty tough“.
- T alk about the options: This step is likely to be most effective when you encourage and help students to identify solutions to their own concerns. Only offer your own suggestions if the students agree they need help. Responses suggested by and endorsed by students will likely be put into action faster. When identifying responses with students, it is important to also discuss the positive and negative consequences of each to enable students to make an informed decision about how to proceed with the situation.
- E nd with encouragement: (Friendly Schools, Evidence for Practice) A summary of what was discussed can help students make a decision about how to proceed with their situation and provides an opportunity for you to give encouragement to the student. At this point it may also be helpful to establish a time to have a follow-up meeting with the student, to discuss the effectiveness of implementing their strategy.