How to work with bullying in and around the classroom

I have now twice experienced “bullying” during my two internships as a teacher. Both times have been a different situation and a different experience but when I’m looking back on the situations I’m sitting with the same feeling, a lot of unanswered questions and an unpleasant feeling.

So I have asked myself, what could you have done to prevent these situations and are there anything I could have done better dealing with it after it occurred?

Just as information. I haven't yet received teaching in child-psychology or any lessons with the subject ‘bullying’, so I have no theories to connect my reflection too, so whatever I’m thinking is just my personal opinion and not facts. (I have been working with kids who have been diagnosed with autism for a year, so I have some insight in the signs that could indicate some kind of autism or another mental issue).

I will just describe the two different situations shortly underneath.

Under my first internship which took place in Denmark, I thought the 7th grade in English and History. A boy in the class had some difficulties when it came to social interaction with his classmates. The lack of social skills may come down to an undiagnosed case of Asperger's Syndrome, which also made some other things in class difficult for him

One day, this 7th grade had History and had to do some assignments in groups. This particular boy had some privilege to help him get as easy as possible through the day, so if he felt that he wasn't up to being in a group he could do it by himself. But this day I wanted to try to make it work. After a half an hour I could see that his temper c

ould be an issue in a short amount of time, so I called him up and asked if he would like to go outside and talk, just me and him like we had done a couple of times before.

When we got outside the classroom, the boy just broke totally down and couldn’t stop crying. I tried to talk to him and make him tell what made him so sad, and after a little while he told me that, he didn't felt like he belonged in this class and some of the other students made fun of him because he was not like them and that they pushed his buttons on purpose to make him explode for their amusement.

At this time I had only been going to the teacher's college for 6 months and didn’t have the tools to help him on my own. Therefore I had a conversation with my intern-teacher about the situation.

In my current internship, in Nice, France we had the students work in groups to prepare a presentation on social media before the rest of the class.

The group-work took place over two and a half week. The day before the last group had to present for the second time the school hold teacher-parents conference. During this, a mother came to the teacher with the choking information, that her daughter had been bullied throughout the group-work and their first presentation. She told the teacher that the three other group-members had threatened her daughter with the promise that they would come after her, if she told us (the teachers) that she had put in more work than them and if she performs better than them during the final presentation. The mother underlined that the teacher could not say that she had given her this information because she and her daughter was afraid that the rest of the class would see her as a rat.

The next morning, the teacher told me this just before we had to meet the class and see the presentation. We agreed on that she had to talk to the students without the other noticing. This part went as plant and when the students came to the board, they (except the bullied girl) was not ready to do the presentation again. We made the group write a short paper about they view on their performance during the group work. They had to do it on the spot so that they did not have the chance to confront each other before an plan their words.

In the afternoon the bullied student came to class alone and had a talk with the teacher about the situation on hand. Again she emphasized that the teacher had to be quiet and not do anything. The teacher is, as in Denmark obligated to talk action when something like this occurs. Her solution to the problem at this point was to give the case to the principal's office and the class’ headteacher.

When I got home that day, I could not make up my mind of what we should have done to notice the problem before it became a problem and what we could have done otherwise in the end.