Article 1 - Bullying in Schools

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/04/04/eveningnews/main6363045.shtml


This article is about bullying and if schools need to find a different approach to bullying within their schools. According to the article, the Department of Education reported that twenty-five percent of American students have said that they have been bullied once a day. So the question we face today, can school and state policies be good enough to help prevent bullying within our schools? Many schools have anti-bullying policies but do they really benefit our students. Some researchers say that they do and others say that they only make the situations worse.
This article is talks about one particular case about bullying. The case is about an eleven-year-old boy named Carl Walker-Hoover. Carl was an active eleven-year-old who loved to play football and always had a smile on his face. When Carl began sixth grade at the New Leadership Charter School, he become a target of bullying. Kids would taunt Carl and some had even threatened to beat him up and kill him. His mom, Sirdeaner Walker called the school but it was already too late. In April of 2009, Carl had hung himself with an extension cord.
There are many cases and sad stories like Carl’s throughout the United States. Bullying is a huge problem within our schools and the protocols and anti-bullying policies may not be contributing. Within the past twelve months, ten students between the ages of nine and thirteen had committed suicide because they had been bullied. (CBS News) This is very sad to
hear and read about. Most students and parents perceive school as a safe area where they shouldn’t have to worry about their children. In the article, Author Jodee Blanco stated that she believed that disciplining bullies is ineffective because it creates a hostile environment and that the bullying may move online. Nowadays, bullying has moved on to texting.
Within the school that I work with we are currently dealing with a case of text bullying. It is a frustrating process for everyone involved; the students, teachers, guidance counselors, and administrators because they are having a hard time coming to a conclusion to fix the problem. It is shocking to hear this because you would think that this type of solution can be resolved within a timely matter but it is not working out that way. This just shows that every bullying case is different and different methods should be used to help prevent bullying.
A method that is used to stop bullying is to tell a teacher as soon as you would get bullied but it doesn’t work out that way most of the time. The situation doesn’t get resolved by talking and telling your teacher. In this article, an elementary school in Harvard, Massachusetts are trying a new method that I think would help students deal with bullying better than telling a teacher. The method is taught by having fifth graders teach younger schoolmates skills to defuse bullying by dealing with the situation calmly; treating the bully as a friend; and not thinking of themselves as victims. Most of the time when students are bullied, they think of them as a victim and that they are the problem when all they need to do is think about the situation and discuss the situation calmly and to not target the bully.