Who me? I'm no bully.

The all knowing and totally trustworthy Wikipedia defines bullying as “an act of intimidating a weaker person to do something…” and “persistent acts intended to make life unpleasant for another person.” Bullying can be verbal, physical, or emotional. Cyber-bullying involves the use of technology, the internet and cellular phones, to achieve the same ends as more traditional forms of bullying. The schools responsibility to manage Cyber-bullying is confusing as laws and policies continue to develop for how to manage this newer form of technology.

As a teacher, listening to my students talk casually is a great way to hear what is happening in their world. Integrating the ideas of bullying, intimidation, or harassment into lesson plans throughout the year would be a great tool for maintaining a open dialogue about all kinds of things impacting my students. I have no real experience with Cyber-bullying or bullying (other then in 7th grade in 1991 but I had lots of people who had my back). My lack of experience may put me at a disadvantage to identify bullying when it was happening.

Schools should work to prevent bullying by helping students learn compassion and respect through discussion and creative activities. Formal policies will do little to help students in cyber-bullying situations and will most likely put the child at an increased risk. Clarifying behavioral expectations for all students and setting clear consequences when expectation are not met will be more beneficial to students. If schools, teachers, and parents try to constantly put new policies in place to manage emerging technology they will be wasting their time an valuable resources.

I'm lucky, as a social studies teacher I will have a great platform to help students expand their understanding of how their actions directly impact others (even if their actions are meant to be humorous). Students in my class will be held accountable as a group for their actions individually. I think a could intervention would be to begin the year and have students develop consequences and avenues to ensure everyone in the class is treated with respect. These classroom guidelines could be revisited throughout the year, and students could have the opportunity to reflect their experiences inside and outside of the classroom.