| Robert Pereira |
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ABOUT ROBERT PEREIRA Robert Pereira is an acclaimed International Educational Consultant and author of “Why We Bully”. Robert was educated in Australia and holds a B.A. Dip.Ed. from Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia, and a Masters Degree from Fordham University in New York. He is also one of the National Trainers for the ‘Effectiveness Training Institute of Australia’ as well as a Member of the Board of Directors. He completed Narrative Therapy-Level II training at the Dulwich Centre in Adelaide, Australia. He currently lives in Australia and is available to offer courses in Singapore and adjacent countries. Robert has held numerous educational positions within his community. For 12 years he taught Science in High Schools; for 3 years he conducted personal development camps for senior students. During this time, he also engaged in adult education, conducting parent education and teacher education courses to assist these adults to resolve parent-child/teen conflicts and teacher - student conflicts more effectively. As a consultant Robert has worked intensively in Australia, Korea, Papua New Guinea and recently, in New Zealand. His background stems from being a secondary high school Science educator. As a High School teacher, Robert became concerned about the personal issues students bring to school as a result of their family experiences as well as the inevitable relationship problems that develop between members of the teenage peer group. In responding to these realities, he developed his passion to address and alleviate bullying in schools and to assist parents to parent their teenagers in a less autocratic manner. Hence, he has been conducting 'Parent Effectiveness Training' (PET) for over 31 years, and now spends over ninety percent of the school year, addressing bullying in schools. Bullying issues have become prominent in the media over the last ten years. Some students have suicided over bullying; some others refused to attend school regularly; some 'dumb-themselves-down' academically out of fear of being further targeted. According to Robert, these behaviours if not addressed, can and do permeate into their adult relationships causing unhappiness and further dysfunction in their adult lives. Robert has developed an extremely successful program based around ‘cognitive behavioural therapy’. This approach is both preventative and proactive in individuals and with class groups. Robert’s success in assisting students/adults to discuss their opposition to the phenomenon of bullying is partly due to the non-threatening environment he creates when working with students and his many years of experience with gender groups at various levels. These range from primary through to secondary and to adult groups. In addition to working with students, Robert also conducts in-service training on bullying where he teaches teachers how to engage in the cognitive model successfully with their students. He also offers Parent seminars on bullying to assist parents to understand the dynamics that may be demoralizing their children and teenagers. Other courses conducted by Robert is a five day workshop on Narrative Therapy. Counsellors who wish to add another therapeutic model to their preferred style of working with clients, are encouraged to attend this interactive workshop on Narrative therapy. Another course offered by Robert has had requests to address bullying issues in the workplace. Often such work-bullying experiences have their roots in childhood that has never been addressed or resolved. Robert believes that both anti-bullying education (for children/adults) and Effectiveness Training programmes promote Peace and Justice within the relationships of people in the home, school and within their communities. His mission and deep passion is ‘to go places where other resource people are unable or unwilling to go”.
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