Rachel Hulicki, Brooke Leithead, Josie Thomson, Becky Dyke

ELM 375 (031)

December 5, 2019

Social Action Plan – Bullying at Smith Elementary

During our time at Smith Elementary, we noticed how the school makes a lot of efforts to

build a strong community schoolwide. Through implementing Passion Project in every

classroom, Smith Elementary strongly values empowering their students to build positive

relationships and become their best selves. Even with these efforts, we found that there were

some exceptions of classrooms struggling to see the character strengths actually carried out. In

the second grade classrooms that we were placed in, we got to see firsthand that some students

struggle with being bullied and come to school every day in fear of being made fun of. This

revealed to us the dire need of actually implementing practices encouraged by the school through

our everyday interactions outside of the 15-minute lessons they get every morning.

This issue of bullying is problematic because school is supposed to be an inclusive and

safe place for children to come learn. Smith Elementary is constantly talking about building a

strong community and that is vital when a lot of students aren’t getting that community at home.

Also, when students are not getting along with one another that creates an added stress which

makes it so much harder for them to focus on learning. The added stress of being bullied or just

the possibility of being bullied is too much for students to handle so we need to do everything we

can do prevent it. However, it is very hard to prevent bullying from ever happening, so as

educators we also need to be proactive when issues to come up.

Being knowledgeable about the issues of bullying at Smith Elementary can help us be

more intentional with our interactions with students. It can also help us as student teachers be

able to encourage all of the teachers and administration to also be more intentional with their
Rachel Hulicki, Brooke Leithead, Josie Thomson, Becky Dyke
ELM 375 (031)
December 5, 2019

interactions. We can take specific steps to build the school community through inspiring one

another to simply be kind and the specific ways they can carry these skills out.

Action Plan

To respond to the issue of school wide bullying across grades and ages, we would

like to implement a “Fill Your Bucket” project. We would ask all teachers to incorporate this

into their classroom but would be flexible in how they want to do so. Our first step would to

possibly host a staff meeting to go over the reasoning and instructions for the project. Our vision

for Fill A Bucket would be for each class to have a space either on the wall or in cubbies for each

student to have a “bucket” or other container for students and peers to place positive notes or

affirmations in. This would be able to be monitored by the teacher and could require kids to do 1

a week or something similar. Teachers would be responsible for making sure everyone has at

least one note by the end of the week. This project would be introduced to the class as a way to

encourage positivity, friendship, and respect between students. Teachers would send a note home

to parents explaining the project, why we are doing it, and how they can encourage students from

home.

We would start this at the beginning of the school year to make it a year long process to

refine it and see what works and doesn’t before doing it for another year. We would give
Rachel Hulicki, Brooke Leithead, Josie Thomson, Becky Dyke
ELM 375 (031)
December 5, 2019

teachers the first month of school to read an introductory book, gather materials, and give them

plenty of time to decorate their buckets and have teachers organize them in the classroom, as

well come up with class rules or expectations for the buckets. Halfway through the school year

towards winter break, we would hold another staff meeting to gauge how this is working in the

classroom and if any teachers have noticed differences in students’ attitudes or bullying in the

class. We would also use this time to refine anything that would make the process smoother or

address any issues that may have arisen.

While this would be a school wide collaboration, each grade level can get together to

collaborate on ways to tailor the activity to the age of the kids. We would have to collaborate

with administrators as constituents to gain permission for the project and have their oversight in

executing it. Parents & guardians would also be considered constituents as we would like to

inform them of the purpose behind our project and how they can help from home by encouraging

their children to be good friends to others and notifying teachers if something of concern was

placed in a bucket or expressed by their child.

When considering our action plan, we must take into consideration push back and

individuals that may resist social change. We believe that our “Fill the Bucket” activity will be

widely accepted and implemented, however, we do have some concerns of pushback. We believe

we may have some push back from administrators. We believe they will be in favor of the idea,

but may not be in favor or able to provide the resources to the entire school. Furthermore, we

may get some push back from teachers In implementation. We have noticed some teachers do

not implement the current action plan because of time constraints. We are worried that some

teachers may choose not to implement this because they believe they do not have time in their

day to spend on filling buckets. Our final concern would be from the parents. We are worried
Rachel Hulicki, Brooke Leithead, Josie Thomson, Becky Dyke
ELM 375 (031)
December 5, 2019

some parents may push back out of fear of “mean notes” placed in their child’s bucket. They

may ask for their child to be taken out of the bucket activity, which would defeat the purpose of

the activity. We would need to purchase most of the materials for our action plan. We would

need to purchase buckets for each student in each classroom. We can use construction paper and

markers to individualize the buckets and use the construction paper for notes as well. These

materials are available to teachers. Our hope for this activity would be that students would

practice showing kindness to themselves and their classmates. We hope students will gain

confidence In themselves through seeing kind notes from other classmates. In turn we hope that

this will motivate students to be kind to others outside of the classroom to create a more

inclusive, kind school community.

Implementation

The first step of our implementation at Smith Elementary School was to bring this idea to

our mentor teachers and discuss if they think that this would be a good thing to implement into

the classroom. Upon our discussion with the second- grade teachers we found that positivity is

something that they are focusing on through their positivity project and that this would be a great

idea to implement into each classroom. After bringing it up to the second-grade team we went
Rachel Hulicki, Brooke Leithead, Josie Thomson, Becky Dyke
ELM 375 (031)
December 5, 2019

with our teachers to the administration to ensure that they were on board with the idea and that

they would support the idea to encourage all teachers to have this in their classroom. We then

had each teacher send a letter home to the families of the students explaining what we will be

implementing and to contact administration if they have any questions.

After this, we had each teacher read the book Have You Filled A Bucket Today? by

Carol McCloud. This book will introduce the topic of “filling each other’s bucket” to the

students and show the impact that kindness can have on a person and a community. As we read

the book, students were asked questions like “What are ways we can show kindness to one

another?” and “When someone says kind words to you how does it make you feel?” The answers

that we received were all very uplifting and showed us that the students need kindness in their

lives and proved to us that this activity should unite the community through this show of passion

for each other.

Results

As we implemented these skille, we saw that the overall morale of the school was

increasing greatly. Students were so excited to check their buckets and see what nice things their

peers had to say about them. We assume that this excitement will continue throughout the year

and that students will continue to be passionate about sharing kindness to each other. Teachers

also found that their students were kinder to each other throughout the day by sharing more

willingly and helping others who may be struggling with a topic.

Next Steps

The next steps for our class would be to continue to find topics that we can relate back to

filling each other’s buckets. Since the school participates in the Positivity Project we think that
Rachel Hulicki, Brooke Leithead, Josie Thomson, Becky Dyke
ELM 375 (031)
December 5, 2019

this concept of filling buckets will be continued and can be related to the other concepts that they

work on weekly such as respect, kindness, curiosity and bravery among other things. We also

encourage the students to bring the idea of filling buckets back home with them and share it with

their families to bring this idea of random acts of kindness to more people than just the students

in our school!