On Bullying

After watching most of the TED Talk videos I found the common thread between each story to be that bullying affects all sorts of people in multiple ways. As a teacher, being aware of the variety of ways that bullying can manifest itself today is very important. As a former coach of a girls team, I am well aware of how differently bullying can look; boy-boy, girl -girl, boy-girl, and girl boy, all appear very differently and are dealt with differently.

Only recently has the phenomenon of cyber bullying come to light but with its massive reach and ease of use, its effects are becoming more and more prevalent in our schools. As a special education teacher, I can see the need for social skills lessons and classes with my students who are developmentally delayed or lacking in emotional control. In the past, I have led lessons on topics like bullying and asking for help. These classes should be available to all students but I do think that special education students are particularly in need.

At Leslie, we have "bullying slips" where students can report incidents and seek help from their counselor and other staff. This is, of course, a good resource but my skeptical side see a slippery slope. While I do think bullying is a real issue, I also see savvy students who abuse our system to "get kids in trouble" or get out of class. I fear that in a possible overreaction to the problem of bullying that our schools could go too far in the other direction where students are not given the opportunity to have conflict and work through it themselves.