Carisa Lee

Re­porter

Carisa.Lee@cnc3.co.tt

Clin­i­cal trau­ma­tol­o­gist Hanif Ben­jamin is ad­vis­ing teach­ers to set up so­cial me­dia ac­counts so that they can keep up­dat­ed with what’s hap­pen­ing with their stu­dents.

Speak­ing at the Caribbean Colour Splash 10th Bi-an­nu­al Sec­ondary Schools An­ti-Bul­ly­ing con­fer­ence at the Na­tion­al Acad­e­my for Per­form­ing Arts (NA­PA), Port-of-Spain, Ben­jamin said this will al­low the teach­ers to be in the loop.

“The oth­er day I was in a thing and I said to teach­ers you can­not have no so­cial me­dia, and not on no Face­book, is for old peo­ple now,” he said.

He added, “Be­cause you will know when some­thing is about to ‘pop off’ in a school, so you need to be there to pro­tect.”

Fo­cus­ing on this year’s theme, “Seek Help,” Ben­jamin told the au­di­to­ri­um filled with stu­dents and their teach­ers that for young peo­ple to do seek such help, they must trust the adult.

How­ev­er, he told the teach­ers, “If you do not cre­ate a safe en­vi­ron­ment where they feel they can walk in­to your of­fice or to your safe and say this is hap­pen­ing to me, this is hap­pen­ing to a friend, this is hap­pen­ing to a col­league, they will con­tin­ue to live and suf­fer and we don’t want that for our chil­dren.”

But while he asked teach­ers to keep an eye out on the young­sters, the trau­ma­tol­o­gist al­so fo­cused on teach­ers who may be bul­lies as well. He said some­times, the “sys­tem” bul­lies them so they take it out on their class.

“If we talk­ing the things, let’s talk the things prop­er, be­cause some­times if the sys­tem is bul­ly­ing the teacher and the teacher doh have an es­cape or a safe space, then guess who the teacher com­ing to bul­ly ... and so the bit­ter cy­cle of bul­ly­ing con­tin­ues,” he said.

He told teach­ers that one of their roles is to in­stil self-es­teem in stu­dents and un­der­stand the risk fac­tors that come with bul­ly­ing.

“You must un­der­stand that when you are qui­et peo­ple come at you, when you are anx­ious and you might be in­se­cure they take ad­van­tage be­cause peo­ple smell in­se­cu­ri­ty,” he said.

And while par­ents were not present, Ben­jamin said some­times par­ents’ un­will­ing­ness to “keep up with the times” caus­es their chil­dren to be bul­lied.

“Stop cre­at­ing sce­nar­ios for your chil­dren to get bul­lied, comb the chil­dren’s hair prop­er­ly, have the chil­dren dressed prop­er ...,” he shared.

Af­ter per­form­ing his song “Change Your Life” Jamel “Cer­ti­fied Samp­son” Samp­son ex­plained to the stu­dents how words have pow­er and that they should be mind­ful of what they say.

“The same way you can tell some­body I love you and they feel that emo­tion, the same way you can tell some­body some­thing bad and they feel that emo­tion…I think to counter bul­ly­ing, in my opin­ion, it is so eas­i­er to be nicer,” he said, be­fore he asked the stu­dents to turn to the per­son next to them and com­pli­ment them.

Stu­dents from Ari­ma North Sec­ondary, Diego Mar­tin Cen­tral Sec­ondary, Mir­a­cle Min­istries Pen­te­costal School and Suc­cess Laven­tille Sec­ondary School were among those who show­cased their tal­ent at the event.

Some 800 stu­dents and 100 teach­ers from 35 schools at­tend­ed the con­fer­ence.