Greendale High School GAB Peer Ambassadors presented to over a hundred 6th grade students from Greendale Middle School.

April 10, 2019

Generations Against Bullying is very proud of our Senior Peers, Noor Fleifel, Diana Victory and Ariel Griffin who gave a presentation at the Greendale Middle School to the 6th grade students. What an amazing job they did on teaching the students how they can become Upstanders. The students had great stories they shared with the senior peers. They learned and discussed respecting different views, and valuing diversity, and the need to respect and appreciate each other. They role played various scenarios on how students can become Upstanders in a non-threatening way. How it takes courage not to participate in bullying behaviors.

Peer to Peer Engagement is one of the most successful tools in teaching according to Harvard professor Eric Mazur in the early 1990s— peer teaching is a method by which one student instructs another student in material on which the first is educated in the area and the second is a learner.

Goodlad and Hurst (1989) and Topping (1998) note that academic peer teaching takes many different forms.
The main benefits of peer teaching include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Students receive more time for individualized learning.
• Direct interaction between students promotes active learning.
• Peer teachers reinforce their own learning by instructing others.
• Students feel more comfortable and open when interacting with a peer.
• Peers and students share a similar discourse, allowing for greater understanding.
• Teachers receive more time to focus on the next lesson.
Research also indicates that
• peer learning activities typically yield the following results for both peer teaching and Peer listening:
• team-building spirit and more supportive relationships; greater psychological well-being, social competence, communication skills and self-esteem.
• higher achievement and greater productivity in terms of enhanced learning outcomes.

It’s a win for everyone.