As a result of the Suicide of Tyler Clementi, the NJ State pushed for the law to practice anti-bullying in the school. Although Clementi’s death brought national and international attention to the issue of cyber bullying and the struggles facing LGBT youth, the seriousness of bullying caught everyone’s attention. The school personnel and the pre-service teachers are now required to receive the training about anti-bullying. All of our Advanced Core Block (ACB) students from the School of Education attended a workshop just a week ago, given by Dr. Blythe Hinitz.
School will now observe the No Name-Calling Week (January 21-25, 2013) and there is a Web site for it: nonamecallingweek.org. Participating students learned about the Anti-Bullying Bill of Rights (ABR) and the definition of HIB (harassment, intimidation, and bullying). For the new practice, everyone is liable and should report any bullying incidents on the school ground as well as cyber bullying. These are new policies and guidelines to follow. However, it is still a challenge for most teachers and principals.
Bullying is actually a universal phenomena. We find some big, nasty people all over the world acting as bullies. Bullying happens not just among kids, it is visible in the adult world, too. It is also evident between nations. Sometimes, for no specific reasons, the big, nasty people bully others because they can and want to. This is not a fair world, anyway.
To promote the anti-bullying education, the early introduction and intervention would work the best for children because they need to learn to respect others and care for other people, instead of being self-centered and constantly hurting other people’s feelings. Dr. Hinitz showed a book entitled, “You Can’t Say You Can’t Play” by Vivian Gussin Paley. This might be a good starting point to educate young people.
The workshop had incorporated plenty of information about the program, personnel, ideas, policies, procedures, and the laws. Dr. Hinitz was well received. However, I wish to see more practical examples of successfully dealing with bullying. What do you do when one kid refuses to work, speak, or play with another? When two kids don’t get along and one of them feels hurt while the other angry, can teachers really resolve their issues or differences? What about some parents holding grudges and bias against some of the kids and stopping their own kids from socializing with others? When kids sense threats or develop anxiety while they cannot present any evidences of negative challenges from others, at this time can teachers or other school personnel step in under such circumstances?
I talked with teachers about their advice. I feel that I am not alone. There are many different ideas but we don’t know the best. We still need to learn more about better ways to proceed.
