Safe & Accepting Schools

Bullying is typically aggressive, repeated behaviour that causes another student to be harmed or to feel afraid or distressed. The harm may be physical, psychological, social, or academic, including damaging the other student’s reputation or property. This creates a negative environment at school for the student.

Physical bullying - for example, hitting, pushing, tripping, stealing, or damaging property.

Verbal bullying - for example, name-calling, threats, humiliating, mocking, or making sexist, racist, or homophobic comments.

Social bullying - for example, excluding a peer from a group, spreading gossip or rumours, making a peer look foolish, or deliberately damaging a peer’s relationships.

Cyberbullying - for example, sending, posting, or sharing negative, harmful, false, private, or malicious content about a peer using text messages, apps, social media, forums, websites, or gaming.

Sometimes, students mistakenly report bullying when they are experiencing challenges getting along with one or more peers. 

1st Key Difference:

Conflict is a problem or disagreement among equals; there is no power imbalance.

Bullying occurs in situations where there are real or perceived power imbalances between individuals or groups. 

2nd Key Difference:

Conflict is a developmentally normative task that children and youth inevitably encounter as they learn to navigate social interactions with others and develop healthy relationships.

To be considered bullying, what must the behaviour include?

• The behaviour must be aggressive and repeated. The bullying happens more than once or is likely to happen more than once.
• There is a power imbalance involved. The student who is bullied inherently has less power than the bully. A power imbalance can be based on many factors, for example

• body size, shape, strength, or appearance; 
• age;
• intelligence or academic success;
• peer group or social status;
• economic status or family circumstances;
• religion or creed;
• ethnic origin or race;
• sexual orientation;
• gender, gender identity, or gender expression; or
• disability or the receipt of special education.

Children who are being bullied might:

• not want to go to school or may cry or feel sick on school days
• not want to take part in activities or social events with other children
• act differently than they normally do
• unexpectedly lose money or belongings
• come home with injuries, torn clothes, or broken possessions and offer explanations that don't make sense

Children who bully others might:

• bully their siblings at home
• be aggressive or disruptive at home, for example, not following household rules
• be aggressive with their friends
• not get along with or play well with other children
• not show empathy or remorse
• come home with injuries or torn clothing
• unexpectedly have more money or new possessions and offer explanations that don’t make sense

• If you are concerned that a bullying incident has occurred, contact the school to determine whether they are aware of the situation. Provide the school with as much information as possible about the bullying incident(s) - date, time, place, people involved, and specifics of the incident(s).
• It is recommended that families continue to work with the school to create a plan to ensure that the bullying is addressed.
• Your school principal can and should always be your first point of contact with any incident, concern or issue. But if you are not ready to connect directly with the school about the bullying incident, please use this reporting tool.

Following a serious incident of bullying, the school Principal will contact the parents/families/guardians of the students who have been involved, to inform them of:

• what happened, including any harm that came to a student;
• what steps are being taken to protect student safety, including the nature of any disciplinary measures taken in response to the incident;
• what supports will be provided for student in response to the incident.