I saw an article on my MSN.com homepage today about how a 12 year old girl committed suicide this summer because she was being relentlessly bullied by her classmates. The young victim was bullied in person, as well as through social media. Things like this are happening all across the country and most of the time, it starts in the classroom. I know this, because (as a teacher) I've witnessed it....more than once. Many times it starts innocently enough when one friend teases another over a bad grade on a test or some sort of poor fashion choice. However, these small comments can quickly turn into a torturous, downward spiral that cause many to choose a quick death over a unbearable life.
Parents put their trust in the teachers, coaches, and administrators within their child's school to protect them from violence. There are procedures in place for every type of horrible thing that could happen in a school. There are fire and tornado drills. There are drills so that students know what to do if there is an intruder or if the school should need to evacuate. Most schools even require their faculty to be certified in CPR and First Aid so that any staff member can assist in an emergency. And yes, there are even programs that schools can invest in to help prevent bullying.
The school that I worked at invested in a program called Olweus. This curriculum required each teacher to teach their students about bullying. It focused on what it meant to be a bully, a bystander, and the person being bullied, as well as what to do if you were being bullied or saw someone being bullied. The information provided literally took 15-20 minutes to go over with our kids. However, at first, our school wanted us to conduct a 30 minute bullying class with our students once a week and we were responsible for coming up with what to tell our kids. All we had to do was keep a "Olweus log" that documented what our lessons were about. Now, this might have been okay if we had someone who came in to walk us through what type of lessons could actually reach the kids, but his was not the case. The only advice we received was to put our kids in circle and get them talking. Its like they wanted us to conduct an AA meeting or something. "Hello, my name is Billy and I'm a bully". That was never going to happen. Its hard enough to get kids to talk to adults about things they are interested in , let alone trying to force them to talk about their feelings and someone bullying them...IN FRONT OF THEIR ENTIRE CLASS AND TEACHER!!! Nark and Snitch are words we heard a lot. They were not going to tell on someone for bullying because they were not going to be the ones to get someone in trouble and the kids who were actually being bullied weren't going to talk because they were too afraid. The students hated the Olweus program and so did the teachers.
So, what ended up happening was teachers would find some YouTube video or an old episode of Boy Meets World or Andy Griffith that taught some kind of moral lesson and we would play it for our kids. If the kids weren't going to talk, we were at least going to make them watch something that showed them what it was like to be a good person. Needless to say most programs to prevent bullying are flawed and do not work.
Another thing that schools do are incident or bullying reports. The way we did this is that we would report any issues to our guidance counselor who was responsible for working with the administration (and authorities if necessary) to reach a solution and help anyone who felt like they were being targeted. This doesn't work either.
Teaching at a middle school, I saw bullying on a daily basis. We would report incidents over and over again and 9.9999% of the time, the bully would be back in class if not within minutes, then almost for sure by the next day. Some times the guidance personnel would deem the situation as "not bullying", as if that was their choice to make. Other times kids would be put into "time out" to think about their actions. Some times, the students who were reported as bullies would be fed a lunch a bbq and soda so that the administration could "gain their trust" and get to the bottom of the students' actions. Most of the time this would result in the kid telling some made up load of bull about how it was "just a joke" or "I didn't know I was hurting anyone" and they would be sent back to class with a full belly and a smile on their face, free to repeat their same crime tomorrow.
I'm sorry parents, truly I am. Your school systems are failing you and failing your children. Most of the time even though teachers are doing what they should and reporting issues to their administration, little is done. Principles want to protect their jobs and they do not want their school to be seen as the place where kids are constantly being picked on or teased. So, they don't do what they should and call parents, expel students, or make reports to the authorities. So, this is my advice to you as parents. Listen to your kids. Take everything they say to heart, no matter how minor it may seem to you. Remember that they are children and their psyche is so much more fragile than that of an adult. Something that may seem minor to you could feel like the end of their world. If they tell you something is happening believe them. I know that kids lie, but its better to be safe than sorry. Call their teachers and their principles and if nothing happens; go to the school. Stand in the halls without anyone knowing who you are and watch how other children are treating yours. Talk to their friends. Don't back down until the issue stops. And, if it doesn't stop; call the authorities, press charges, change your kid to a different school. Do whatever it takes to save your child!!!
Many of the young people in our country are literally being bullied to death. Put your trust in child's school, but not all of your trust. It is good to be skeptical and to ask questions. You could save your child's life and that's the decent truth.
