This is an article that will be going in my school paper, The Trojan Tempo, along with another article of mine about bullying. Please give your criticism of what I say as well as other suggestions about what to do about bullying. Also please comment on any mistakes I make.
We all have defining moments in our life. Such as when we were baptized, married, or starting a career. These moments define who we are. One of the most defining moments in my life so far happened in the first week of the first grade at Concord Elementary. I can remember better than I can remember yesterday. I was being chased around the courtyard during recess by five other first graders. They were yelling at me, calling me shrimp because I was the smallest kid in the class. I was crying, running from them in fear, and at them when my fear turned to anger. They just ran away laughing and then come back.
From that day on you would describe me as bullied. I sank into a state of depression that never lifted until my sophomore year of school because of the bullying I went through. I have spent half my life in depression at quite a young age. My parents had me go to psychologists, counselors, and psychiatrists trying to help me. My academics were affected as well, its hard to stay focused, when you are too worried about what to do about a bully.
I have personally been through so much bullying, and yet I have friends and know people who have gone through so much more than I have. You can not look at what I and the people I know have been through and say that our school system has been a success at limiting bullying. The schools need to change there policy on bullying, there are many things they can do to stop the problem. We cannot eliminate bullying but if schools spent time to address the problem they can do a lot to help the bullying.
The first thing we need to do to stop bullying is to have a universal definition of what is bullying in school. Mr. Yunker wrote “What is joking around and what is bullying?”
Mrs. Cross gave her definition of bullying as, “Making any student feel uncomfortable in their learning environment.”
Other students said that bullying was a student picking on another student, and another one that was used multiple times was intimidating another student. Bullying is a broad term. I talked to Mr. Moehkul and he expressed the problem of finding the difference between a conflict and bullying. I have come up with this definition. Bullying is repetitive malicious acts against or from a specific student that are not started from prior conflict. This means that one student can be hurt by many different students and the student is bullied, or a bully hurts many different people and is bullying some one.
The first thing that can be done about bullying is happens the first day of school. There are several things teachers need to do. First they need to tell students that bullying will not be allowed in their classroom. Bullying should have its place every rule sheet in every classroom. Teachers also need to talk to the class about what bullying is, so students realize what bullying is. Every student has bullied another student at some time in their life. Many students don’t even realize it when they are doing it, they don’t realize how much they hurt the other person. Also teachers need to tell their students that if they are being bullied that can come to that teacher and they will do something about it. Many students are too afraid or embarrassed to come to a teacher when they are bullied.
When a student does come to a teacher about bullying they need to always make sure something is done. If a teacher doesn’t act the student will not trust that teacher, and probably the rest of the teachers to do anything about bullying. Also the teacher needs to tell the bullied student what was done about the bullying. Many time the teacher will do something about the bullying, it will continue and the bullied kid assumes that nothing was done, and then loses trust.
Teachers also need to encourage good social patterns in their classrooms. In news writing Mr. Davis periodically talks to us about not forming clicks in our class and talking to everyone. If a teacher picks out a student who is a target for bullying they need to encourage the kid to not do things to make their situation worse. If the kid is not talking to anyone before or after classes, encourage him to talk to people and make friends. If the kid smells bad, encourage him to take a shower. If the kid is doing things that annoys his class mates encourage him to stop.
Teachers also need to understand how little they catch bullies. When I started these articles I sent a survey by E-mail to every teacher in the high school. One question I asked was how many times do you not catch bullying. Many teachers refused to give and answer to that question, and many more gave vague answers. I also asked teachers how many times they catch bullying, one said 2-3 times this year while another said 50. This difference suggest how little bullying is caught in the classroom. From my own personal experience, bullying is caught about once every 50 times that it is not caught.
So how do teacher get around this? The answer is that they need to communicate. When I talked to Mr. Moehkul about bullying he showed me how he keeps a record of all discipline and see if student has been to the office for bullying before. When a teacher catches an act of bullying they need to send e-mails to the student’s teachers saying,” I caught this person bullying this person, has anyone seen these two involved in bullying before?” Also when students go on to the next grade teachers should be notified of anyone who has a history of bullying or being bullied. This way teachers know who to watch, and who would need to a heavier punishment to get the message through.
Mr. Myers asked “How often do teachers bully students?” Just like bullying in general it happens more often than people think. I just witnessed such a thing in a class a few weeks ago. Something funny happened and the class laughed. One student made a joke about what happened and the teacher laughed. A second student did the same thing and had the same results. A third student who is bullied regularly made a joke and the teacher then said “Who said you could talk!” What make bullying by a teacher very bad is that it causes so much more harm. Almost always it is in front of the whole class, causing much more embarrassment for the student and causing the student to be bullied by his peers.
If a teacher can bully another student than they can also turn their head the other way when a student is bullied by classmates. This is especially true when the student is a star athlete or one of the top of his or her class. Teachers need to throw out all stereo types when dealing with bullying. They should show no favorites when dealing with a bully. Also the school administration needs to vigorously fix the problem when a teacher bullies or ignores bullying. They need to make sure the problem is fixed and that it doesn’t happen again.
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Very thorough article. Good work.
I also believe that the school (and the teachers, since they have the most contact with the students), has the responsibility of preventing bullying.
In addition to effective discipline, I also think it's important to for students (bully victims and bulliers) to have an opportunity to investigate the psychology and feelings behind their actions and inactions. This is very difficult to establish, given the nature of high school and subsequent "peer pressures." That way, we don't just punish the bullying, we stop that specific incidence permanently (or at least we hope.)
I also think it's important for some kids to toughen up, and for others to tone down. I mean, I'm not saying, "Oh, well kids should suck it up and it's not important for the school to stop it." And I know that a lot of kids are shy, insecure, whatever. But the bottom line is that bullying can also be a lesson to make the bullied kids more resilient, tougher. And that has to come from within the individual, for the most part.
Great job Super -- I'm impressed.
First a few grammar/spelling suggestions, then I'll give more substantive feedback in separate comments. "Someone," "cannot," and "stereotypes" are all typically written as one word. "Cliques" is the correct spelling of the word for small social groups that you refer to.
i think the pictures in the top left that move are pretty darn cool. and your article is quite interesting and helped with my project. gracias.
I think that schools should have security cameras in the classrooms and the hallways; so that if a student tells a teacher that another student did or say a bad thing to him or her and the other student denies it, then the teacher can review the tape of the incident and realize that the student (that caused that incident) was lying; therefore, that student wouldn't get away with it because I'm sure that has happened before that a student would tell a teacher that another student said or did a bad thing to him or her and that student would deny it. Then, that student would get away with it because that teacher would believe the other student that he or she didn't cause the incident, even though there's a phrase called, "Trust No One".