Alleyn’s Anti-Bullying Week

Monday 21 November marked the start of Alleyn’s Anti-Bullying Week, a week of focus linked to the official national awareness week coordinated by the Anti-Bullying Alliance (ABA) which aims to raise awareness of bullying of children and young people, in schools and elsewhere, and to highlight ways of preventing and responding to it.

Kicking off a week later than the ABA’s official week (to ensure a focus on anti-bullying and avoid clashing with last week’s Sustainability Week), Mr Beauchamp began the Alleyn’s Anti-Bullying Week with an assembly to the Middle School on kindness.

Kindness is one of the five Alleyn’s core ROCCK values of respect, opportunity, curiosity, courage and kindness which pupils, parents, staff, governors, and alumni agreed defines our school’s identity.

In the assembly Mr Beauchamp referenced research published in the journal Science in 2008 entitled ‘Spending Money on Others Promotes Happiness’ which found in an experiment that people who spent money on others felt better than those who had spent money on themselves.

Mr Beauchamp continued by asking the Middle School to check under their seats in the Great Hall. To their delight, some pupils and staff found hidden lollipops. Mr Beauchamp then challenged them to not eat their discovery but to use this small treat as an act of kindness by passing it on to someone else – someone who is having a tough day or a friend who is always there for you and seeing how this small gesture makes them feel. He hypothesized that if this gesture were sincere, those individuals would feel a surge in oxytocin and feel positive.

And he encouraged those individuals to then pass this act of kindness on in another form – such as helping a friend, offering a compliment, or simply holding the door for others, to initiate a knock-on effect of kind acts. Challenging the whole Middle School to mark anti-bullying week, Mr Beauchamp encouraged everyone to spread acts of kindness through our school.

He concluded the assembly with a quote from poet and civil rights activist, Maya Angelou:

“I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

Alleyn’s Anti-Bullying Week will continue with tailored assemblies for each year group across the Senior School and PSHE sessions which celebrate uniqueness and supporting one another.