Cyberbullying

Ten to fifteen years ago, student-to-student harassment was a significant issue for school officials. When boys used to give each other wedgies, swirlies, noogies and for girls it was leaving terrible messages about them on the stalls of the bathroom, spreading rumors, fighting and turning each other against each other. Now we still have those things happening but on a greater scale and a new topic of terror Cyberbullying. Cyberbullying is the use of Internet technology to inflict emotional harm through repeated and deliberate harassment, threats, and intimidation. It can consist of making threats; issuing insults and slurs; and other activities that are designed to inflict harm or damage to a person and his or her reputation, life, or even computer system. Cyberbullying typical includes email, cell phones, chat rooms, blogs, social networking sites, and instant messages. What makes Cyberbullying so intense is the veiled nature of an Internet presence. When you were bullied in school fifteen years ago, you knew who started the bullying and where it was coming from. Now the anonymity of the internet allows the harasser to stay hidden and undefined. I do not have any personal experience with Cyberbullying but this is becoming a huge problem for schools, students and parents. We need to take a stand against Cyberbullying and become more aware of how to deal with this issue.

Although the students are interacting over the Internet outside of school, they still come face-to-face each day on school grounds where many of them must then endure the in-person impact of Internet harassment. Certain legal principles are keeping the schools from being able to punish these bully's. A school may only restrict student speech that causes a substantial and material disruption of school activities because students do not shed their constitutional rights, including their right to free speech. A school may restrict student speech that is at odds with the school's educational objectives. They generally may not restrict student speech merely because they disagree with it or find it to be offensive. Instead there must be some compelling educational objective that justifies restricting the speech, or the speech must be a threat to school safety or to a campus environment conducive to learning. More often than not, when a case involves the right to free speech and off-campus expression, school officials find it difficult to satisfy this standard. I really do think that it is time to refresh and breath new life into the rules of the school. Most of these policies were written in the day where we couldn't have ever imagined technology in every home and school, nationwide. The same values that held true during those generations do not hold true today. Therefore, if we want to stop this bullying we need to be able to address it properly and that would be done best if we could amend some of the rules and policies that are in place, or just create new ones.

My plan for dealing with Cyberbullying in my classroom would begin with building a community in my room. I want to take the labels off of everyone as best as I can so that the students can understand and see that each of them is dealing with the same issues. I think that if we can begin to teach the students to actually see who they are bullying and how it affects them that Cyberbullying could subside some. After building a community I would lay down some ground rules. I would let the students know that I will not tolerate Cyberbullying or bullying of any kind in my classroom. I will show them videos and read them stories about Cyberbullying and how it has changed the lives of those students. Of course there would be some reactionary tactics as well. If I found out that one of my students was Cyberbullying another I would make the two of them sit down with me privately so that they could better understand how and why it started in the first place. If you can get the students talking about their issues face-to-face I think that it can dis spell some of the bullying. So I would use both pre-emptive, reactionary, group and individual tactics for dealing with the bullying. I would also like to try to come up with a plan with the Principal, if there wasn't already one in place, about educating the students in an assembly atmosphere about Cyberbullying and it's affects. I truly feel that the best way to make these actions stop is by building a community. That would be my first step in the entire process.