In general, I believe that social issues such as harassment, bullying and teasing are definitely issues that our schools need to address. I have worked at schools where there were bullying and teasing issues, boy and girl fights daily, and teacher's that took advantage of students inappropriately. In any case, it caused a high level of tension and stress amongst the staff and students.
As a Health Teacher in CMS, I see firsthand what these issues can do to students; mentally, academically, physically, emotionally and socially. I have seen students afraid to go to class because of other students' teasing and bullying. I can even use my experiences to relate to the first video about sexual orientation. I had a student who went into a suicidal watch and counseling because his parents found out about is alternative lifestyle. He was a perfectly happy child one day to a severely depressed one the next just because another student decided to make a prank phone to his parents to "let" them know of Johnny's behaviors. I even experienced a student who skipped class because the "teacher" consistently humiliated her in front of the class daily. The fact remains that these issues were finally addressed by several teachers at that school that created prompt actions by the administrative team and school leadership team to step in to reduce the frequency of these issues.
In fact, due to the increased cases of teasing, bullying, harassment and fighting on North Carolina campuses in 2006 at the middle and high school levels, the NCSCOS included a lesson on bullying and teasing along with coping with diversity. CMS took further action in 2008 and integrated a pilot program, which is in full force today with the 9th grade Healthy Living Curriculum. This program is called "Souls of our Students" and specifically deals with the issue of diversity. CMS has also revised a system wide Anti-Bullying Campaign that prohibits bullying to take place on our campuses and buses. The fact that CMS identified a major problem with violence in the schools was a huge step to develop a plan and strategies that are currently in progress.
In sum, the goal for the principal is to establish a school climate where all stakeholders are involved with school safety and the deterring of student bullying and teasing, fighting,and harassment. They also need to communicate to teacher's in direct manner what is acceptable and unacceptable behavior with students. This is called professionalism. Another words what our infamous leader quoted to us the first day of class "Will this end up on the 6o'clock news." Furthermore, we are educator's that need to provide a safe environment for ALL students to learn and interact no matter what type of diversity is acknowledged or not in our schools. We need to enable students to feel empowered and comfortable to come to us to share these issues with us so we can help. I believe that every school needs to have school safety in their SIP.
You are so right! I worked for ten years in a middle school and saw so much bullying and harassment. We as a school took steps to come together as a "whole" school and address many of those issues. I remember one student I had in particular was often teased about his feminine qualities. He was the child that would ask to be excused to the restroom and return with toilet-paper hanging from the back of his shorts. He often made "off the wall" comments about topics that drew the ire of his classmates and we had to be constantly vigilant to keep him safe. The worst though, was a phone message that I received from his mother that begin like this, "Ms C., I received your message after work yesterday and I was very upset and just can not agree that my child is such a horrible person and so difficult to teach. I'm sorry he is causing you such difficulty in the classroom....etc” I was totally shocked and had obviously never called and left any such message at her home. I quickly called the mother and after we talked discovered that an unknown someone had placed a prank phone call to her home, impersonated me, and related negative information about her son. She did not have caller ID, and we were unable to determine who had made the call. Luckily, she never told her son and so he was unaware of the incident. However, it actually affected how safe I felt at school and was very frightening that someone could be do devious and cruel as to impersonate a teacher and leave such a hurtful message.
ReplyDeleteJenn-- I am curious about how effective you feel that the NCSOS lesson on bullying is. To be honest, I have often felt that many anti-bullying lessons seem pretty hokey and not productive. Is this something that could be modified to work in all grade levels? Is it something that would help teachers out?
ReplyDeleteJaime- I know what you must be thinking but actually at the High School level its very good. We spend a good deal of time on diversity and discrimination. I have also incorporated with that information about cliques and how they affect teen behavior. It's a powerful lesson on "How to Survivie HS."
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