Wow, those bullying videos really hit me hard. It's easy to forget how strongly bullying can affect our students. I wonder sometimes how many kids were silently suffering at my high school, but I never knew. Also, I think about all the students who I knew were being bullied, but I did nothing to stop it.
As a teacher, I want to stop bullying from occurring at my school. I definitely agree that school-wide intervention programs in elementary school are very important. That one at Graden Elementary certainly seemed to help. As a high school teacher, I plan to speak bluntly to my students about the effects of bullying like SuEllen (I can't remember her last name), the counselor, did at Graden. High school students need lessons to be relevant to them. They appreciate it when adults are honest and real with them about serious life issues.
What do you all think of that method of discouraging bullying? I'm open to constructive criticism.
ED460 Personal and Social Well Being is a course taken by college students in education during their student teaching semester. Topics covered include: poverty, child abuse, bullying, drugs, alcohol, and tobacco, counselors' role in school, adolescents and choices, and the use of technology.
My main thought in regards to the bullying was I did not like how there seemed to be quite a disparity between "bullies" and "victims." Most students have probably been both at some time or another to some extent. I do not like the titles of bullies and victims because that is not how we should view our students; we should view our students as people and do what we can to help them.
ReplyDeleteI think having open discussions with students about bullying is a good thing. That gives students a kind of accountablity; if they have been spoken to about bullying and its negative effects, then they should be expected to act appropriately when they see it happening.
I feel as if it is really important for us to pinpoint the situation and solve it as soon as possible. As we have all seen in the videos, bullying has longterm effects on their life, and can eventually lead to suicide. This is a serious issue that we are all going to be facing in our classrooms. Open discussions about bullying is a phenominal idea because students need to realize this is an issue to be aware of. This is not a funny matter and it needs to stop now before it gets any worse. Students will appreciate open discussions since they will feel as if their teacher knows their mature enough to handle the topic.
ReplyDeleteI think that openly and bluntly talking to students of any grade (in an age appropriate way, of course) would be totally appropriate. I think it would probably be important to talk to the principal and the parents of your students about what you are going to talk with the students about. While I was watching the video yesterday, I kept thinking... I hope the parents know what she is saying to their children. Talking about bullying, abuse, particularly sexual abuse, is something that is important but I think it might be very easy to step over a boundary line and scare a child who had no exposure to such things. I also think that by having class or school wide discussions of the topic will make it easier for students to break the silence about what they are experiencing and hopefully they will be more open to talking with teachers or peers about any problems they are having.
ReplyDeleteFor high school I think its beneficial to be open when your talking about topics such as bullying. In high school I didn't really pay attention for bullying and maybe bullying was more prevelant in my high school than I thought. Maybe if our teachers were more open when talking about bullying our school would have dealt with situations better. Not until after high school did I truly find out how some of the people at my high school were being affected by bullyin and maybe if the school was more open some of my classmates wouldv'e not encountered so many problems after graduation.
ReplyDelete