Sunday, December 4, 2011
Harassment and bullying
According to the 2011-2012 student handbook, harassment/bullying is "any unwelcome verbal or physical act from one person to another person that may cause either physical or emotional harm. Any conscious willful, repeated and deliberate activity intended to harm and/or induce fear through the threat of further aggression. An imbalance of strength/power; it is not about anger or conflict, it is about contempt; a powerful feeling or dislike towards a person considered to be worthless, inferior or undeserving of respect." These behaviors can be minor (eye rolling, laughing at someone) or major (threatening, hitting) or anywhere in between. What kind of bullying or harassing behavior occurs in our school? What is the difference between "I was just kidding" and harassment? How does a teacher tell the difference? What should be tolerated and what should be dealt with? Does the attitude of "some kids just need to toughen up" have a place in our school?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
12 comments:
The bullying in our school is generally small acts of disrespect towards a person; laughing, eye-rolling, mimicking, and so forth. For the majority of the student population, this is no big deal. However, this greatly affects a handful of the more sensitive students. There is nothing wrong with them; they aren’t dumb or helpless, they have just been raised in manner to take offense more easily. Students in Redfield need to recognize that characteristic and respect it. On the other hand, the sensitive student also needs to toughen up a little, and realize that an impolite comment or insulting action towards them is not a slam towards them, but just the other student’s personality, and ignoring the offensive action is the best choice. If both personalities could meet in the middle to do this, bullying in our school would minimize.
The bullying in school to me is very limited. Limits to making a joke that only you think is funny or saying something you don't really mean but the bully just wants to build self-confidence by trying to take it away from someone else. Unfortunetly there are people who say "go kill yourself" or "No one loves you" and so on. Thank heavans there are only very few people who say it and mean it. The difference between "I was just kidding" and harrasment is how the bully actually means it. When the line "I was just kidding" comes out, We can tell if the bully actually means it or not. The biggest difference is how the person takes it. Teachers can tell the difference just by looking at the eys of the bully and the victim. You can see how the victim takes it and if the bully really means it. A little joke every now and then should be tolerated, but a joke that is mean every day should be written up. The reason why there people think there is a lot of bullying going on is because of people "not growing up." If people would toughen up, bullying wouldn't be a big problem. The problem is when people freak out because of one little think, that's when bad things start to happen. Growing up should hopefully increase with maturing.
Most of the bullying in our school is generally reserved to the smaller acts of disrespect, but on occasion there have been instances of more severe acts. Most people can get over being called names once in a while, but there is always going to be a portion of the student body that is more sensitive. Part of the problem is the administration, which makes promises towards punishments for specific kinds of harassment, but rarely follows through on those punishments. Teachers also often look the other way when it comes to harassment and bullying because they fear not being the "cool teacher" anymore. In my opinion, this is also bullying because the student body is always told to help out people in need, and when teachers don't even do that, how can they expect students to do it? The definition and punishment of harassment and bullying needs to be more clearly outlined in the planners and followed through with by the administration and staff of the school.
Bullying can really take an effect on people. You don’t realize it but you give someone a dirty look or call them a nasty name, it does hurt them. Maybe the first few times it happens it doesn’t really bother them because they have been told not to let names or looks effect you. But once you start doing that then the bullying gets worse. First it starts off as well that person was talking badly about me and I heard it. Harassment isn’t seen enough and I think everyone as a school needs to step up and look for it a little bit harder.
I think that bullying in our school is at a minimum. I don’t believe that there are major cases of harassment or bullying happening in our hallways at school. Maybe I’m just oblivious to it, but I honestly can say that I don’t see bullying as a huge issue in our school. I think how bullying is perceived, whether it’s harassment or “just kidding”, is based on what the offender meant by it and how the victim took it. I think the little things should be tolerated and kids should just learn how to stand up for themselves, and the major things should definitely be taken care of. I do think that most kids should learn to just toughen up because real life doesn’t have a teacher or principal that intervenes every time someone’s feelings get hurt. Dealing with harassment yourself will help you deal with it later on when you’re forced to face your own problems. Running to someone else isn’t always the best way to fix issues, rather I think students should take a deep breath, realize what the actual severity of the situation is, then figure out how to fix it themselves.
In my own personal opinion, the bullying at Redfield High School is minimal. There may be a few students in school that would disagree, but they may also be one of the people that dish out the bullying, as well as get it back. The minor acts of disrespect may include laughing at someone or rolling your eyes. These disrepectful behaviors shouldn't be hurtful towards anyone because it happens in everyone's life a certain time. I know that I will never be able to step inside someone else's shoes to feel their pain, but as far as I can see around here, most of the time the "harassment" is really just goofing around. If teachers could realize that most of the time we are just kidding and if the "victims" would stand up for themselves when being bothered, there wouldn't be an issue with "bullying."
I think the bullying in our school isnt as bad as the bullying in schools in bigger towns.The types of bullying that tend to happen in our school are; sarcasim, eye rolling, etc. In some cases, bullying is a very sensitive subject for some students. When a student gives says a sarcasic comment to another student, the student recieving the sarcasim might interpret it in a hurtful way and feel bullied, even though thats not what the initial idea for the comment was. I think that teachers sometimes bully students too. They might not realize that they are doing it, but with some teachers you can easily tell when they are zeroing in on a particular student all the time. You can tell the student is uncomfortable and is afraid to confront the teacher about it. Kids who are being bullied sometimes dont have a safe place to go or some one to talk to. Bullying is an important issue and needs to be addressed.
In our school we have the eye rolling, laughing at kids, and teasing kind of bullying going on. The difference between I was kidding and harassment is when you're just playing with a friend, compared to, singleing someone out to beat them up or majorly threatening them. You tell the diffrence by the way the one who is being picked on acts when the "bully" leaves. If they are all happy and they know it was a joke then, they are going to be fine. If the student has an akward look on their face then you might want to be concerned. If the teasing is agressive and regularly done then it should be delt with, but if its playful and occasional then let it slide. "Some kids just need to toughen up" does have a place in our school. Mostly with our guys because they always are concerned with who is the strongest, or coolest.
My opinion is that bullying in our school is minimal. It's mostly the act of eye rolling, mimicking, laughing; and so on... For most of the school this is no big deal. It's just trying to act cool or joking around with someone. Bullying in our school is when one person says something and the other takes the comment as offensive. This person could be sensitive to that comment and may take it a little far... On the other hand, this person may just need to toughen up a little bit, and/or realize it wasn't a slam to them, it was just a simple joke. But, this is the student personality and the best solution for it would just be to ignore it. If most of the students could and would ignore this it could minimize the problem.
I agree with Maggie. The bullying is generally small acts of disrespect. People can get over getting called a name every once in a while, but when it is every day, It gets extremely old and really hurts and gets to a person. There will always be sesitive people but that doesn't mean that some people just need to "grow up and toughen up." I also believe that some teachers, not necessarily in our school, overlook bullying because they want to be the "favorite teacher." Everybody has a different definition of bullying, it just depends in what senario you are in at the time. For example, We have to live by Mr. Lewis's definition of bullying.
I don't think we have as big of a bullying problem in our school as some people think we do. Some people consider bullying as eye-rolling, mimicking what someone else says, or laughing, but I consider this as just an act of disrespect towards someone. We have had a few cases of some what bad bullying in our school, because someone has told them they are fat, or they just keep on picking on someone and not letting them join their group. "I was just kidding" is laughing while you tell somebody something that is not threatening, and "Harassment" is when someone just keeps on saying rude remarks until the other looses their self confidence. It depends on the teacher what they consider bullying, and also if they are laughing or say it really seriously. I consider when someone says laughingly "I am going to kill you" as an act of bullying and should be delt with.
I feel that in our school there is not as much bullying as people would think. However, there are the kids that seem to be super sensitive and feel that any minor disrespectfulness is really hurtful and it might crush them, but also there are the kids that the slightest amount of disrespect won't even bother them. For me, I guess i haven't really noticed that much bullying because all it really is in our school is disrespect, but even then it is at a minimum. However, there are quite a few people that might disagree with me because they might see it, but there is also the kids that are dishing it out and saying that there isn't any bullying or disrespectfulness going on in our school.
Post a Comment