Ticker

6/recent/ticker-posts

Header Ads Widget

Your Advertisement Here

Taking Action Against Bullying in the 2012

Most students are coming back to school again this year and it's just time to remember that we all have a right to live our own lives, but in peace, and it's also a right to go to school without being hassled.

Bullying means disrespect. Showing respect for other people means accepting their differences and treating them the way you'd like to be treated. Unfortunately, bullying is the exact opposite.

In the process appears four subjects: The bully, the target, the bystanders, and the ally. When you're getting picked on all the time, it's hard to feel good about yourself. Bullying can affect a teen in middle and high school, in all kinds of ways. Some symptoms may include: Aches on their head and stomach, absence of concentration in class,can't sleep, low self-esteem, depression, skipping school and the most dangerous of all, thinking about hurting themselves or others.

Last year, the media covered a variety of cases where young students lost their lives as a consequence of bullying. One thing is teasing (a playful thing you do with friends) and another is taunting (which is meant to hurt someone's feelings). Both terms mean making fun of someone, but under this situation they're quite different.

Fortunately, two media specialists from Maine had published a book which aims to help parents, students and teachers this year to combat what Kay Stephens and Vinitha Nair called Cyber Slammed. That's precisely the name of their book: Cyberslammed: Understand, Prevent, Combat And Transform The Most Common Cyberbullying Tactics.

Authors focused on six different tactics and ways parents and educators can be informed, and armed to protect their children. The two main references used in the book were http://www.cyberbullying.us/aboutus.php, http://stopcyberbullying.org/, and netfamilynews.org, along with Bullying Beyond the Schoolyard (Hinduya, S & Patchin, J.) Of course they used other techniques and surveys.

Some of the bullying activities are very subtle, which is why teachers and other adults often don't notice that it's happening at all. There are four common kinds of bullying: Physical Bullying, Verbal Bullying, Social Bullying, and Cyber Bullying. The aforementioned book talks about cyberbullying, understood as a bad use of technology to threaten, harass, or hurt someone, spread rumors or pass on someone's private information.

Since most teens who are bullied often don't want to tell adults what's going on, Stephens & Nair propose free workshops(In Maine only) on a series of internet safety. They also have created a digital learning network. Writers suggest these six tactics of self-defense are what is missing from today's cyberbulying curricula:

Using the Internet

1. Digital Pile On. Ganging up on someone on chat forums or Instant Messaging.

2. Rating Website. Using Internet polls to get bystanders to vote for their "ugliest," "fattest," "dumbest" peers.

3. Imposter Profile. Creating a website or social networking profile to deceive others to assume it is genuinely owned and maintained by the target.

4. Haters Club. Spreading mob mentality on websites or social networking sites to persecute an individual.

Using Cell Phone

5. Sexting. Taking or sending an explicit photo of oneself and forwarding it to friends or potential suitors.

Using a Digital/Video Camera

6. Videojacking. Videotaping a target without his knowledge/approval and uploading the video to a popular video-sharing websites.

The money you spend buying this book is well worth it. Each one of the tactics is accompanied by a guide to conflict resolution for the teacher and 'inmediate steps' to be taken by either adults or students. One of the sections I love most is the Tech Defense which elaborately shows you what do in the event that you need to help and defend a teenger in your school with lawful, and practical strategies.

Post a Comment

0 Comments