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I have been pondering this question in my head for a couple of days since I listened to Kevin Honeycutt's YouTube video on Chicken Glasses. I have always thought that we need a way to eradicate bullying but never thought to break it down into specific behaviors that would be very easy to spot, to define bullying beyond the basic definition.
So what is bullying? What behaviors make a bully, what makes one behavior bullying and another behavior a joke? In my school I see many different kinds of bullying. I see the students who are being called names like 4 eyes, geek, nerd, druggie, crackhead, looser, etc. But I also see the silent bullying that happens when kids are told things on the internet, when kids are stalked and ridiculed for what they wear, what they say, what they did. This is a permanent tattoo on their social media life. This is not something that is limited to the 100 kids in their grade or even 35 kids in their classroom but now it is now public to the whole school, the whole district, and to the whole world. Students can privatize their own personal site but other students who are choosing to publicize this information often don't and that label sticks. Now a days people don't remember that in 8th grade I embarrassed myself by dancing alone in front of the whole school to a Tiffany song unless I bring it up, but my students have digital stigmas attached to their names for life. Things that either they posted or friends posted that will never fade away. Things that they fear will mostly likely be with them for life and they probably will.
I think about my little girl sitting at home, playing on the swing set and enjoying time reading books on the ipad and wonder how can I protect her from being the victim of online bullying in her future. I think about the student at our high school a few years back that committed suicide because the bullying that he tried to escape from in one district followed him to his new district because of online bullying. I think of the multiple 6th grade students sitting up stairs trying to get through the day, trying to learn but trying to forget that someone posted the horrible remarks on Facebook and Instagram. How are we to protect them, if we don't even know that is happening?
Take Kevin Honeycutt's challenge and help define bullying, help define the other manifestations of social aggression.
