All names are pseudonyms.
Bullying is
a problem in many schools, and is something for which no classroom should have
any tolerance. However, I think it is a lot harder to monitor bullying in a
middle school than an elementary classroom. The students spend a lot of time in
lunch, gym, and in the hallways during passing time where teachers cannot
monitor everything that is going on all of the time. They also switch between 6
teachers a day so communication of any problems becomes more difficult, but it
shouldn’t be impossible.
Last week,
we had an incident where two students said inappropriate comments (Jordan and
Jesse) to two other students (Lennon and Dakota) that made them very
uncomfortable. One of the students got their parents and the administration
involved. The principle talked to the two perpetrators and made it clear that
they were not to talk to those students (Lennon and Dakota) anymore. However,
my teacher was not informed about any part of this situation, and all four of those
students happened to sit at the same table in her class (the original incident
didn’t occur in that class.) One day during class one of the students accused
of bullying (Jordan) was making a huge deal out of the fact that Dakota made a
face at Jordan during class. My teacher took Dakota outside to stop Jordan from
disrupting the class more and to see if there was a reason why Jordan was
overreacting so much. Dakota told my teacher about the whole situation. My
teacher was very unhappy that she hadn’t been informed of what was happening,
especially because it allowed this situation to continue. Jordan has now moved
tables in the classroom, and Jesse has been moved to another homeroom, but I
think that this problem could have been stopped earlier if there had been more communication
among the school’s faculty.
Bullying is such a hard situation. Like you said, I think it's incredibly difficult to monitor bullying in middle schools because there is so much in between time that is not monitored by teachers or other school personnel.
ReplyDeleteI think it is equally hard in elementary schools, though, because the line is so unclear between what is bullying and what is not bullying. Our students tell on each other so often, and it's very hard to tell what actually happened and what didn't. If we spent all of our time addressing these 'he said, she said' issues, we would never get any instruction in. But on the other hand, students saying negative things to each other really isn't okay in any circumstance.
Last week, we had an issue because we had two students who got into an argument in the hallway coming back from related arts. Apparently, one of the students said the f word to another one of the students after the first student pushed him. It was the day before our Valentine's Day party, so we told students that they would have to earn back the Valentine's Party by having perfect behavior. Only one of them earned back the party. We have issues with these two a lot, and usually we really don't have very many consequences for this behavior. What do you do when the parents aren't involved and it's not a serious enough behavior to suspend or write an office referral?
So it's different being in a placement than having one's own classroom. But I'm going to talk like we have control of the classroom. Sally, I wonder if giving one-on-one talks would be effective. A serious one-on-one talk. I could see this working with some of my students who currently tease or are mean to each other. One thing that is good about my students is that they seem to take the word bullying seriously--they understand bullying is bad and heavy. So I would say 1) Have a serious talk and give a warning (if this happens again you are going to the principal) and 2) If it happens again take them to the principal. My teacher has done this with a student--I think it's not a bad way.
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