Right now I'm watching a movie called Bully. It just really breaks my heart. I mean seriously, how can children/teenagers treat each other so awfully? What breaks my heart, especially having a Down Syndrome sister, when kids make fun of students who are different physically or mentally from them. It's awful that a child with special needs thinks that their friends are the ones that beat them up and make fun of them at school and the bus. :'( I've had to face this kind of thing almost on a daily basis with my SECOND graders. Bullying is a real thing. It's not a made up event that people are doing to call attention to themselves. Students would rather just fit in and be normal.
I think you can blame this issue on so many levels. One major source for me would be the media. Have you all seen what children are watching now a days? Especially MTV. A lot of this bullying is actually based off the desire to "be popular." I've had so many of my students tell me that in order to be popular, they have to be "cool" and that includes doing bad things and making fun of other students. For a teacher, this is very frustrating. You can have many "talks" and "lessons" based of bullying and how it hurts others. You can have them do an activity where they get to experience what it is like to be made fun of or singled out. You can keep them after school and discuss why bullying others is wrong and go through a website. You can bring them off to the side and talk with them. And the most frustrating thing? Often times it won't make a difference. You can start to get students in trouble. You can write it on their behavior logs, send them to Think Tank/Time Out, send a letter home, have a Parent/Teacher Conference, and if things get really bad, you can write your students up. However, this still doesn't seem to make that much of a difference.
Another source of the bullying, I believe, is what students may see at home, especially if the community they come from has a violent history. You only get ahead by putting others down. I've heard some stories that would make most of the average people in the United States shudder. What do you do if what they see at home is totally different from what is expected at school? The people that have the most influence in their lives isn't normally the teacher, but their parents/family. (Which, I believe, is how it should be.) However, if the expectations are different at home, why do we expect them to act totally different at school? Of course in areas where parent and teacher expectations are the same, the students tend to do better. So what do teachers do if they're fighting against the expectations of the parents at home?
And yet another source, I believe, of the bullying is the inability to speak out about it and the laws that tie administrator's hands. The administrators are a very few. Honestly, they cannot be there every second of every day to watch students to make sure no bullying is done. Same goes for the teachers. I agree that our classrooms should be some of the safest places in the world, and I think we should strive for excellence, but as in my second paragraph above, we can only do so much. There's a reason parents only have one child at a time. (Maybe two or three) We love our students. We want to make sure NO ONE gets bullied or bullies someone. But like what's been said over and over, we cannot be with our students every second of every day. We cannot follow them in every bathroom stall, every area of the playground, or be in every part of the classroom at every second. It is just not humanly possible. So what is a teacher to do?
I've been thinking a lot about this lately. One great thing that I saw that came up in the movie was a group called Stand for the Silent. It's a group that is standing up for those who are bullied and feel like they can't do anything about it. They talk to not only the bullied but to the bullies. They pass out bracelets and make their voices heard. I feel like in a way, it's giving power to those who feel like they have no power. I think that is one key to helping the bully cause. Help those who want to get out of it, and stop those who are doing the bullying. Those who are doing the bullying need to see that those they are hurting are just like them, capable of feelings and emotions and being your friend. We need to empower those who are being bullied. Making bullying uncool and unacceptable. We've already tried reaching the parents and having talks, but more needs to be done. If the parents of the bullies aren't going to stand up for what's right, then those who have a heart need to. I'm still trying to think of ways to do this, but it won't be an overnight fix. We've got a long way to go. What are some ideas you might have?
Peace to all,
Keri Lynn
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