On CNN, Anderson Cooper held a town hall meeting to discuss bullying in America. CNN felt the conversation was appropriate with October being Bullying Awareness Month. The conversation included psychologists, students who were victims and bullies, and parents. The conversation touched on lack of teacher training to handle bullying, bullying through social media, communication between parents and the school about bullying and bystanders who witness bullying but do nothing about it.
The issue on how to train teachers to educate students about the impact of bullying stood out. As a teacher, I know I am sometimes not the best person to handle a situation that a student may be going through. Dr. Phil and other psychologists on the show support the idea of building bullying into the curriculum. The idea being, that by training teachers to handle and discuss issues with bullying and addressing the issue school-wide, will make students more aware of the effects that negative comments have on other individuals.
While this idea sounds great, what happens when students are out of school? With cell phones and the Internet, bullying now extends beyond the school walls. Some children now deal with bullying 24/7. So while, the schools may be able to fight against verbal harassment at school, it is going to take a broader approach to deal with bullying overall. It was very disheartening hearing parents talk about their children who felt that the only escape from bullying was suicide. Hopefully, during National Bullying Awareness Month, we can begin to have discussions with our students about bullying.
In my classroom, I plan to incorporate conversations on bullying into the weekly discussions I have on Fridays with my classes. I teach middle school, and bullying is very present with this age group of children and is detrimental to their self-image if not handled quickly.
3 comments:
Hi Brandon, you bring up a great topic that you are correct in identifying as undervalued and as larger than the classroom. Bullying can be extremely damaging and as we’ve recently witnessed in the news, potentially life threatening. However, bullying is nothing new. A social pecking order has been practiced since the dawn of human kind and is even observable in most types of species interaction. Humans have shaped bullying to a morbid art form with different types of abuse ranging from direct physical contact to implicit emotional and/or psychological assault. It is often the latter that unfortunately goes unnoticed until a drastic breaking point. Adolescence is primarily the age of which such abuse reigns supreme - both as perpetuators and receivers. As a daily staging ground for every kid growing up in America, our schools house this abuse of every type and level. It is interesting to consider our public education system as a social microcosm, but also worrisome as a teacher and adult put in charge of recognizing and effectively addressing every type of social ill imaginable (also every benefit and inspiration, but that’s part of a different discussion). With the increasing prevalence of technology and social networking bullying continues to respond to and co-evolve with society. Last spring’s suicide in a Boston high school, as well as the recent Rutgers University suicide, was escalated by the use of social networking and the technological threat of an immediate and uncontrollable exchange of information. Today’s bullying is potentially unlimited in scale due to the tools at kid’s disposal. This is frightening for victims and adults alike. Brandon, you are absolutely right in identifying bullying as a danger outside the classroom that needs to be recognized as such. Teachers need to be aware of bullying as a legitimate threat to safety that can quickly pass from cell phone to cell phone even while students are seated in class attentively taking notes. I believe new warning signs need to be developed and exposed to teachers and taught to our students as part of the curriculum. An understanding of human empathy and consideration of others is nothing new in a classroom curriculum and I don’t think it will necessary solve what has been so rooted in human interaction, but the recognition and provision of support and guidance now has a more immediate need to be highlighted as students suffer in silence without any knowledge of healthy outlet.
Hi Brandon, you bring up a great topic that you are correct in identifying as undervalued and as larger than the classroom. Bullying can be extremely damaging and as we’ve recently witnessed in the news, potentially life threatening. However, bullying is nothing new. A social pecking order has been practiced since the dawn of human kind and is even observable in most types of species interaction. Humans have shaped bullying to a morbid art form with different types of abuse ranging from direct physical contact to implicit emotional and/or psychological assault. It is often the latter that unfortunately goes unnoticed until a drastic breaking point. Adolescence is primarily the age of which such abuse reigns supreme - both as perpetuators and receivers. As a daily staging ground for every kid growing up in America, our schools house this abuse of every type and level. It is interesting to consider our public education system as a social microcosm, but also worrisome as a teacher and adult put in charge of recognizing and effectively addressing every type of social ill imaginable (also every benefit and inspiration, but that’s part of a different discussion). With the increasing prevalence of technology and social networking bullying continues to respond to and co-evolve with society. Last spring’s suicide in a Boston high school, as well as the recent Rutgers University suicide, was escalated by the use of social networking and the technological threat of an immediate and uncontrollable exchange of information. Today’s bullying is potentially unlimited in scale due to the tools at kid’s disposal. This is frightening for victims and adults alike. Brandon, you are absolutely right in identifying bullying as a danger outside the classroom that needs to be recognized as such. Teachers need to be aware of bullying as a legitimate threat to safety that can quickly pass from cell phone to cell phone even while students are seated in class attentively taking notes. I believe new warning signs need to be developed and exposed to teachers and taught to our students as part of the curriculum. An understanding of human empathy and consideration of others is nothing new in a classroom curriculum and I don’t think it will necessary solve what has been so rooted in human interaction, but the recognition and provision of support and guidance now has a more immediate need to be highlighted as students suffer in silence without any knowledge of healthy outlet.
Hi Brandon, you bring up a great topic that you are correct in identifying as undervalued and as larger than the classroom. Bullying can be extremely damaging and as we’ve recently witnessed in the news, potentially life threatening. However, bullying is nothing new. A social pecking order has been practiced since the dawn of human kind and is even observable in most types of species interaction. Humans have shaped bullying to a morbid art form with different types of abuse ranging from direct physical contact to implicit emotional and/or psychological assault. It is often the latter that unfortunately goes unnoticed until a drastic breaking point. Adolescence is primarily the age of which such abuse reigns supreme - both as perpetuators and receivers. As a daily staging ground for every kid growing up in America, our schools house this abuse of every type and level. It is interesting to consider our public education system as a social microcosm, but also worrisome as a teacher and adult put in charge of recognizing and effectively addressing every type of social ill imaginable (also every benefit and inspiration, but that’s part of a different discussion). With the increasing prevalence of technology and social networking bullying continues to respond to and co-evolve with society. Last spring’s suicide in a Boston high school, as well as the recent Rutgers University suicide, was escalated by the use of social networking and the technological threat of an immediate and uncontrollable exchange of information. Today’s bullying is potentially unlimited in scale due to the tools at kid’s disposal. This is frightening for victims and adults alike. Brandon, you are absolutely right in identifying bullying as a danger outside the classroom that needs to be recognized as such. Teachers need to be aware of bullying as a legitimate threat to safety that can quickly pass from cell phone to cell phone even while students are seated in class attentively taking notes. I believe new warning signs need to be developed and exposed to teachers and taught to our students as part of the curriculum. An understanding of human empathy and consideration of others is nothing new in a classroom curriculum and I don’t think it will necessary solve what has been so rooted in human interaction, but the recognition and provision of support and guidance now has a more immediate need to be highlighted as students suffer in silence without any knowledge of healthy outlet.
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