Challoner's Anti-Bullying Week

This week, Challoner’s school community celebrated Anti Bullying Week, a yearly showcase of the school’s aims to combat bullying as well as to be open and inclusive to all.

Kicking things off on Monday, we demonstrated our differences with Odd Sock Day, a fun yet meaningful way in which DCGS students could take pride in their individuality, whilst only gently breaking the school code - shh, I don’t think the Headmaster noticed! Naturally, the highlight of the day was seeing classmates’ funky socks, which only occasionally made me wonder about their levels of sanity! Fun as it was, behind lay a key message; Be proud to be yourself. Certainly, embracing this crucial message whilst intertwining it with some frankly strange sock choices could only have greatly positive effects on our school community.

Embedded throughout our weekly assemblies, the theme of anti-bullying was no less emphasised. Coinciding with Anti-Bullying Week, Inter-Faith Week also let the school community learn about their differences. Following a thought-provoking assembly from Mrs Panayi, we were encouraged to have more profound conversations with our friends to let us understand what makes each other tick. Underlying both of these is was belief in the joy of being different. Wouldn’t it be boring if everyone was the same?

Each form group was then visited by prefects from the school’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) group to help us understand what we could do to make the community as open and as supportive as possible. Included in this was the DCGS DEI charter which outlined the standards that we should all look to incorporate into our daily lives to be more inclusive. Bullying in any form is never tolerated at DCGS, and we, as part of the community, have to make sure that this is enforced. Help is available in a multitude of ways, whether that be with your form tutor, head of year or any member of the Student Development team, so make sure your voice is heard and look for help if you need it.