Page 14 - Demo

14The other students might also feel embarrassed that the student is being bullied. These feelings of shame and embarrassment, together with the lack of adult intervention, can eventually lead to indifference to the situation and the bullied student. When bullying is pushed aside in one%u2019s own mind, itbecomes mundane and difficult to notice anymore. Bullying has become everyday life within the classroom and at the school, and individual students have no reason, means, or courage to intervene in it. An important goal of the KiVa program is to affect the whole class by creating an atmosphere of awareness, intervention, and shared responsibility. KiVa aims to affect the students in a way that, instead of being a silent approver or encouraging the bullying behavior, they would rather show that they do not approve of the bullying. When a common sense of responsibility is created within a group and the norms of the class change, bullying tends to decrease and stop. The objective of the program is also to give students concrete tools to safely intervene in bullying and create an atmosphere where no one has to be afraid of being bullied themselves when defending another student.