In the January/February issue of Nea Today, there was an article on bullying. As a parent and a special education teacher, this is a very important issue for me. My son, who will be 8 on Wednesday, is sweet, smart and sensitive. He has many friends and a great sense of humor, but he has already been bullied. Last year a student repeatedly told him, "I'm going to kill you if you don't give me your toe tokens" (little plastic feet that he earned for running laps around the track at school). I can't remember how I found out about this, but when I talked to him and told him we needed to tell his YMCA teacher, he did not want us to. We had previously talked to him about bullying-why it's not nice to bully others, how it makes people feel, and what to do if you are being bullied, but he didn't want us to intervene and didn't really want to share it with us in the first place. We of course met with his teacher and she made him feel good about sharing the situation with her and she explained why it was important for him to tell an adult. There had been other instances of this student bullying other kids and this started in Kindergarten-YIKES. the Nea article stated that bullying usually starts just as kids are learning about and trying to form relationships so that's when we need to start the dialogue with students-in preschool. It makes sense to me, and I think students definitely need to be educated about bullying during school. I'm not sure all parents would feel comfortable explaining all the different aspects of bullying and how to prevent it or what to do if you are bullied. Parents definitely have an important role, but we need to get a consistent message out to kids at an early age and work toward a bully-free culture. It's not just a part of growing up, and it won't make you stronger. Bullying can have lasting affects on its victims and because of today's technology it's much easier for people to gang up on the bullied. It's very sad that so many young people are commiting suicide because of the torment they've gone through. I hope I can keep communication open between my children and my students about bullying, how to stand up for people who are being bullied, and what to do if you are being bullied. I also hope that as teachers we will not look the other way when we see bullying or pass it off as "normal".
Teaching preschool, specifically 3 and 4 year olds, I often think that the most important skills we work on are learning how to form friendships, how to interact with others, to share, to take turns, to negotiate, to treat others with respect. We see how important it is to give children the resources and skills to interact positively with one another - but I never thought it all the way through to bullying. It is a natural progression - that if a child does not have positive interactions and the tools to learn how to interact with others, they can use the negative power and manipulative strategies that they see or experience on others. We currently are in our 2nd year of implementing PBIS(positive behavioral intervention strategies) at Central, and have worked on teaching and providing consistent behavioral expectations throughout the building within all programs. We also are using second the second step curriculum to foster emotional awareness and positive interactions (it is a violence prevention curriculum) I know with my own children and their friends, I tend to be overly sensitive to negative social interactions - teasing, gossiping etc. and try to engage them in conversations about friends and classmates to have an open dialogue so they are comfortable coming to me if they have concerns!
ReplyDeleteA 7 year old gets plastic surgery because of bullying:
ReplyDeletehttp://news.yahoo.com/video/health-15749655/child-gets-plastic-surgery-to-avoid-bullies-24902719
My advisory group watched and discussed this- the students were very interested in this and had a lot of opionions. It made them think twice about Bullying.