Make It Stop: How We Can Help End Bullying

On today's agenda, we will be talking about everyone's favorite topic: Bullying

(Expects everyone to uncomfortably shift in their seats and debate reading further)

While I am sure dear reader, that nobody actually ever wants to talk about bullying, it is a very real and very dangerous threat, even if you have never experienced it firsthand. If you've been living under a rock for your entire life, bullying is the act of acting negatively towards another person, through either verbal, physical, or emotional means. Now you may be wondering, where is this "bullying" most likely to occur? The schools dear friend, the schools.

In fact, 30% of all students claim to have been involved with bullying, either as the victim or the bully, themselves. Considering that bullying can lead to depression, low grades, low self-esteem, and even SUICIDAL THOUGHTS, this is quite the huge problem. While teachers and parents, as well as many celebrities and corporations, have tried to end bullying once and for all, their efforts have had minimal results. Bullying needs to be taken care of once and for all.

Simply put, bullying must cease to exist, simply for the sake of the affected students and its well being. Everyone has a right to be happy, and if our students are becoming depressed and suicidal, something must be done before its too late.

As teachers we have to be able to talk to students we think are being bullied (although we should probably be sure. That awkward moment where you tell a kid they can come to you if they're being bullied and they have no idea what you're talking about.) More importantly though we have to be able to bridge the gap between the gap between teacher and student, so our kids can know they can communicate with us and trust us. Not only that, we have to be able to communicate with the bullies.Evidence shows that bullies act they way they do, due to social and emotional problems as well (ie. broken homes)So many instances of bullying could have been avoided if only the victims thought they could do so without being ridiculed by their peers, or if the bullies had someone to talk to about their own issues. There is far to much of a distance between teacher and student. We lost at least 5 students, who committed suicide in September of 2010, due to homophobic bullying. We cannot simply be in schools to teach, we have to be someone the kids can trust. We need to be a source of guidance, both in and out of the classroom. We need to be people who can build our students up, not tear them down. Most importantly we need to help make it stop and put and end to bullying.

For more information on bullying and what we, as teachers, can do to prevent it, I direct you here and schmere

But why wait until then? Do something now and upload a video to the It Gets Better Project

Now for the musical portion of tonight's event:

(Oh so that's where the title came from...)

                                        

(Yes that is Ray William Johnson)