Plymouth Mayor Visits The Goddard School

Name calling, fighting and teasing are a few types of bullying.

Bullying can happen at a young age, that's why the  dedicated all of last week to celebrating friendships and bully prevention.

This is the second year the early childhood education center has had a week of focusing on how children can play well with each other and accept each other's differences.

The school is for children 6-weeks-old to 6-years-old and uses the philosophy that if you build a sense of community early on, it will have a lasting affect.

"Our community games throughout [last] week were to make connections in the community," said Plymouth Goddard School Director Sally Hansen. "We had a Friendship Day, a Goddard Care's Day where we made postcards for the Troops, Pennies for Patients were collected and more."

As part of the Goddard School's weeklong celebration of friendship and play-based learning, Plymouth Mayor Kelli Slavik was invited to talk about what she does as mayor during Community Hero Day Feb. 10. She talked to two classrooms about what a mayor does, how she became mayor, what makes up a city, how she helps people. (Check out the video below to hear some of her discussion with the children.)

But the week's true goal was anti-bullying. Bully proofing is a goal for the children who, at such young ages, aren't intentionally being bullies, but do things impulsively that may be hurtful, Hansen said.

"There are three big things we focus on," she said. "The first is building empathy by having a child recognize and understand another child's feelings and giving them the tools to do that."

The second is cause and effect, knowing the consequences for doing something they didn't know could be hurtful.

"For example, one child knocks over another's building blocks and now that child is crying," Hansen said. "We tell the child who knocked it over why the other one is crying and show them how they can fix that by helping rebuild the blocks and apologizing."

The third thing is pro-social skills and vocabulary, she said.

"Rather than hit, ask help from a teacher," Hansen said. "If someone is teasing you say, 'stop, I don't like that,' or calling you a name, just tell them 'my name is Anne, please call me by that.'"

Children understand that kind of language, she said. Hansen has seen children who come back to the school after learning these skills and language and they are still using them.

One simple task during the week had the older children making play-doh and giving it to the younger ones in response to asking them "what can you do for others?"

Learning through play is a key part in the activities. At one point 10 children from the younger classes and older classes swapped rooms and interacted with each other during playtime, setting up mentoring relationships along the way.

Parents also got involved with helping out when it came to activities like making postcards and collecting pennies. Parent involvement is crucial to taking the lessons learned at school and instilling them for when they leave it, Hansen said.

Goddard has been in Plymouth since 2007 and is owned by a mother-daughter duo, Pam Miller and Lisa Amic. Both have degrees in elementary education.