FRIDAY — SMALL ACT #5: LEAVE ROOM FOR REPAIR
Stopping bullying is essential. What happens afterwards matters too.
By Friday, I would want the conversation to become a little harder.
We have noticed.
Included.
Spoken up.
Refused to amplify cruelty.
Now comes the question children often ask with extraordinary directness:
What happens to the bully?
The Mauled Mage does not finish when its cyberbully is unmasked.
I am glad it doesn't.
After all the avatars, deception, danger and anger, the story eventually returns to a much smaller room: the school counsellor’s office. In Chapter 43: Sorting It Out, Beam arrives furious. Elvin, the boy responsible for the bullying (spoiler alert!), is there with Lee, Bindi, Maddy, Jack and Miss Pardo. Elvin eventually reveals that he had himself been badly bullied when younger. He built a tougher persona and went on to hurt somebody else.
His history explains something.
It does not erase what he did.
That distinction matters.
The Read-Aloud Kit deliberately selects Chapter 43 as its closing classroom passage because the story moves beyond exposure toward accountability, understanding and repair. The Activity Guide follows it with a mediation role-play in which students take the different characters and practise expressing feelings, listening and considering what change might look like.
For eleven-year-olds, this can produce a far richer discussion than simply asking whether Elvin is “good” or “bad”.
Beam is angry. Is he entitled to be?
Lee has been harmed. What does Lee need?
Should understanding Elvin's past change how the group treats him?
Does forgiveness have to happen immediately?
What would Elvin have to do before trust could return?
What is the difference between a consequence and revenge?
And one of my favourites:
If someone genuinely wants to change, how would we know?
There is no need to hurry children toward a comfortable ending. A restorative conversation is not pretending nothing happened. In The Mauled Mage, Elvin's own pain adds context without cancelling his responsibility; the counsellor helps move the characters towards dialogue and accountability rather than another round of retaliation. That final movement is useful in a school setting because anti-bullying education cannot deal only with targets and bystanders.
Somewhere in our classrooms is also the child who sent the message.
The child who laughed.
The child who excluded somebody.
The child who joined in because everyone else did.
The child who has just realised that what they thought was funny wasn't funny to the person receiving it.
We need consequences where consequences are warranted. We also want children to discover something enormously important while they are still young:
Behaviour can change.
Friday's small act might therefore be an act of repair.
Delete the cruel post.
Own what you did without adding but.
Apologise without demanding instant forgiveness.
Return somebody to the group you excluded.
Correct the rumour you helped spread.
Tell the truth to an adult.
Change how you behave tomorrow.
For the rest of the class, repair might mean allowing someone who has genuinely taken responsibility the possibility of becoming more than the worst thing they have done.
That is a harder form of kindness.
And perhaps a more useful one.
The 2026 Bullying No Way theme asks Australian school communities to imagine what can happen when looking out for one another, speaking up and kindness become ordinary behaviours rather than special-event behaviours. (Bullying No Way)
There is a fitting place to end our week.
Not with a slogan on the wall.
With a question for Monday morning:
What small thing will we keep doing when Bullying No Way Week is over?
Because that is the test.
Friday’s small act: REPAIR.
#BullyingNoWay #SmallActsBigImpact #RestorativePractice #TheMauledMage #CyberbullyingPrevention #EmpathyInAction #DigitalCitizenship #SchoolCulture #KindnessMatters #ThoughtBytes #BullyingNoWayWeek #SmallActsBigImpact #BullyingNoWay #LetsStopBullying #NationalDayOfAction or #NDA2026
