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The teacher can start his/her lesson presenting the story of Odysseus and the Cyclops.

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multiple choice exercises

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3. Character traits and physical characteristics 

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3. Character traits and physical characteristics 

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Comparison of Odysseus and the Cyclops. After finishing the exercise a critical question comes up: Do the traits of the Cyclops resemble to anyone at school nowadays? The answer is affrirmative and reffers to the bullies!

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The teacher can read the article Bullying and peer abuse by Angela Oswalt

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Bullying or Peer Abuse occurs when children are singled out for ridicule and torment by peers who are relatively more powerful than they are. The children who do the tormenting (e.g., the bullies) are typically older, physically larger, more aggressive or more socially powerful than their victims. The bullies' goal is to experience themselves as powerful and dominant. Their acts of bullying are designed to induce in their victims a sense of powerlessness, helplessness and humiliation, the appearance of which is proof of their dominance. Their ability to force victims to experience painful states they cannot avoid or ignore is proof of bullies' potency and effectiveness.

Bullying behaviors vary, and may include verbal taunting (e.g., name calling), physical aggression and even organized defamatory marketing campaigns carried out in a sophisticated manner through the use of text messages, web pages and social networks. Physical bullying may include hitting, tripping, or stealing from other children. Verbal bullying can involve yelling, name calling and other sorts of verbal harassment. Emotional bullying involves telling secrets about other peers without their knowledge, starting hurtful rumors, or purposefully excluding children from games or activities. All types of bullying (these and any others we have not mentioned) are hurtful and unacceptable forms of peer abuse.

Parents should not tolerate bullying behavior. Bullying is bad for childrens (and adults) short and long term emotional and mental health as well as educational, occupational and social functioning. Parents who become aware that their children are being bullied, or that their children are bullying other children should take immediate action to shut the bullying process down. There are several strategies which can be brought to bear to accomplish this goal.

Many parents have probably heard the old conventional wisdom advice to the effect that the best way to handle a bully is to ignore him (or her). This strategy points in the right direction in that it encourages victims to not react, but it fails miserably in many cases because bullies are able to counter it by escalating the intensity of their violence until the victim cannot ignore it and must react.

Because ignoring bullies can be impractical, victimized children are better served by practicing responding to them in ways that do not convey a sense of fear, either verbally or non-verbally (e.g., through body language). Children need to practice avoiding arguing with bullies, giving them things, or responding to them in any way (even in a humorous manner). They need to practice doing this in a manner that does not communicate fear. In order to do this, children need to be taught about body language and what fearful people look like in terms of eye contact, facial expressions, body posture, and hand positions. Parents can help children to become more aware of their body language through the use of role play and the process of videotaping children when they are feeling afraid and showing them what they do behaviorally that communicates this fear.

To avoid communicating fear to bullies, children can practice keeping a relaxed, calm facial expression rather than scowling, looking tearful, or quivering. They can also learn to stand or sit "tall" (but still relaxed) while holding their arms and hands naturally to their sides (rather than hunching over and crossing their arms or clenching their fists, which suggests anger or fear).

A vehicle many parents and children may explore for increasing children's confidence and reduce their fear is to enroll them in a class that promises to teach them self-defense or martial arts skills. Signing up for such classes is a mixed bag which may benefit some children but not others. Particularly with regard to girls, bullying may not occur in a physical form and thus there is nothing to defend against physically. As well, children singled out for physical bullying are often not born fighters or even terribly interested in self-defense except inasmuch as they are forced to learn it. They may not have the drive to learn the necessary skills they would need to fight back effectively. Even if they are able to learn relevant defense skills, the sheer number of bullies who taunt them may make physical resistance futile. It's nice to offer victimized children this option if they desire it, but no child should be forced into such a class against their will.

Though children will almost certainly want to handle bullying situations on their own (as any socially visible instance of their parents taking action may embarrass them or become further fodder for their being teased), parents may need to intervene (in a non-vigilante manner!) in order to protect their children's safety or keep the situation from worsening.

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Bullying or Peer Abuse occurs when children are singled out for ridicule and torment by peers who are relatively more powerful than they are. The children who do the tormenting (e.g., the bullies) are typically older, physically larger, more aggressive or more socially powerful than their victims. The bullies' goal is to experience themselves as powerful and dominant.

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...article continued. Then he/she can talk with his/her students about bullying and how we can prevent or stop this phenomenon.

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The most effective ways of shutting down bullying involve rallying the social community within which the bullying takes place to soundly reject that bullying. For school-aged children, bullying generally takes place within a school community, where the tormentors attend the same school as the victim. It is therefore appropriate for parents to report bullying to school administrators so that they can take action. Parents need to open a conversation with children's teachers or coaches in order to raise awareness of the problem, and coordinate efforts to make the school, team, and club environments safe and nurturing for everyone involved.

School action on bullying prevention requests is not always a given, and therefore parents may need to push the school to take appropriate action, including through appropriate legal channels if other approaches do not produce results. Historically, many schools have taken an "ignore it and it will go away" approach to bullying. More recently, schools have become more willing to engage. Many schools now can and do implement school-wide anti-bullying programs designed to engage the school community to become aware that the bullying is happening and that it should not be tolerated. Such programs rally school authority figures to promote the message that bullying is abuse and should not be supported. They also work to teach the same message to students who can then exert peer pressure on each other to make bullying "not cool". Nothing takes the wind out of a bully's sails like rejection from the people he or she was trying to impress. In other words, if bullying ceases to be perceived as an effective display of dominance within the school culture, its frequency will lessen.

As bullying is abusive in nature and can take the form of criminal assault, parents should not rule out the possibility of calling the police so that an official record of the abuse can be created, taking children to the hospital so that their injuries can be officially cataloged and documented, and even consulting with legal counsel to brainstorm ways to use the law to compel the abuse to stop. Setting up official documentation that bullying is occurring is important beyond any legal action that might be taken, in that it demonstrates that real third-party-recognized victimization is occurring. If parents efforts to shut down bullying behavior should ever become a contest between the word of the victims' parents against the word of the bullies' parents, these records may become crucial in swaying public and legal opinion in favor of the victim.

Even if their own children are not bullied or bullies, parents can help along the process of changing children's culture to one that does not tolerate bullying by encouraging their own children to help discourage bullying they see occurring between other peers, even when they are not directly involved. Children should not be encouraged to step into the middle of a violent situation. However, children can help interrupt bullying instances in more subtle ways by simply being present, or by changing the conversation or activity which effectively shifts the social focus away from assault. Through this process, parents can help teach their children about empathy and compassion for the suffering of others. By helping victims, children can do a good deed by being kind to kids who struggle to make friends or social connections, in the process, improving their own self-esteem and the self-esteem of the picked-on kids. There but for the grace of God go I.

Parents who believe their own children may be bullying others need to send their children a clear and unequivocal message that bullying behavior is not acceptable. Adults need to explain and to illustrate, in a developmentally appropriate way, why bullying behaviors are hurtful and unacceptable. After they do this, children who have been hurting and tormenting others should receive immediate and appropriate consequences that fit the situation. If 10-year-old Sean is taking 9-year-old Jamal's personal video game player and teasing him with it, Sean's parents may want to take away all of Sean's video games for 2 weeks.

Apart from providing punishing consequences for bullying, parents of children who bully need to make a judgment call as to whether their children can benefit from experiences which can help them grow their empathy. If Sean is suitable for the placement, his parents may want to have Sean perform some kind of community service, for instance, at an animal shelter, helping animals that have been abused and abandoned and have little power. Being forced to confront and take care of neglected creatures may help empathy dawn in Sean's mind. However, if parents have misjudged the severity of Sean's social deficits (e.g., if Sean is sociopathic or conduct disordered), this kind of placement may simply provide him with an opportunity to torment animals - a bad outcome by any measure. Parents who suspect their child may be conduct-disordered, and on their way to becoming an antisocial personality disordered adult should immediately consult with a mental health professional to learn ways to counter this trajectory.

Shutting down bullying is a difficult task which is sometimes quite difficult if not impossible to accomplish. If parents find that they are making little headway in protecting their children from assault despite their having made strenuous efforts, at least some consideration should be given to the idea of moving the child away from the social milieu in which the bullying is occurring. This might be accomplished by moving the entire family to a new home in a new neighborhood (if such a thing is financially possible for the family to accomplish!), or more simply by making a case to the school board that it is in the child's best interests to be transferred to another school. Moving the child out of the bullying environment is unquestionably an extreme action which only makes sense after other alternatives have been exhausted. However, it should be actively considered if there is no other practical way to shut down the bullying. Parents' failure to protect a bullied child may result in serious and life-long emotional, social, academic and occupational harm to that child.

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The most effective ways of shutting down bullying involve rallying the social community within which the bullying takes place to soundly reject that bullying. For school-aged children, bullying generally takes place within a school community, where the tormentors attend the same school as the victim.

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Students get divided into groups. Each group has to put in the right order 5 images referring to the Odysseus and the Cyclops story.

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Put the images in the right order according to the story of Odysseus and the Cyclops.

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7. Revealing what is written behind the images- Creating an acrostic (memorization technique)

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7. Revealing what is written behind the images- Creating an acrostic (memorization technique)

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After finding the right story order students have to look behind the images (When I implemented this scenario in my class I had used paper images!). The teacher  -having in mind the 5 ways to shut down the bullying process according to the article that he/she has read (by Angela Oswalt)-  will have written behind the 1st image  the phrase "Body language", behind the 2nd image the phrase "Report to school administrators or even the police", then "Anti-bullying programms at school", "Ignore" and at last  the phrase "New environment". The first group of students writes the 1st phrase on the whiteboard, the second group writes the 2nd phrase and so on. In the end the whole class will be in front of an acrostic! Have you found it yet?

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Students can hear Sean Connery reciting Ithaca.  A close text question may follow: How do you understand  the following verses in relation to bullying nowadays?
Laistrygonians and Cyclops,
angry Poseidon—don’t be afraid of them:
you’ll never find things like that on your way
as long as you keep your thoughts raised high.

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Constantine P. Cavafy's "Ithaca" recited in English by Sir Sean Connery

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This video was shown on November 26, 2013 at the University of Ottawa in an event organised by the Embassy of Greece in Canada, the Canadian Commission for UNESCO, the Parnassos Hellenic Cultural Society of Ottawa and the University of Ottawa!

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When trapped in Cyclops' cave, Odysseus realizes that he is physically outmatched, and brute aggression will only trap them in the cave forever.  He creates a scheme that allows them to escape.  Think of a scenario where you have been backed against a wall. E.g. Suppose you are being bullied at school. How do you manage to deal with it?
Or:
Imagine you are Odysseus and you are trapped in the Cyclops cave. How would you manage to escape?

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The outline of a body is drawn on a large sheet of paper, which is later stuck onto the wall. Students write inside the  silhouette (the man on the paper is Odysseus for our teaching purpose) anything that Odysseus might have thought or felt inside the Cyclops' cave. Around the silhouette every student shall write down whatever he/she wants to tell Odysseus (advise, wish etc.) It is a very nice drama technique that enhances improvisation, writing skills and empathy!

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Behind the paper images the teacher can also stick a qr code. You can use the following link in order to create qr codes http://gr.qr-code-generator.com/. QR codes often fascinate students during the learning procedure! Of course they need to have downloaded in their mobiles or tablets the qr scanner application in order to scan the qr codes and reveal what is hidden behind them!