The video that I chose to watch was the story of Jared. I felt as if the mother wasn’t telling us the real reason as to why her son was being bullied at school. The mother had stated that he was an assistant coach for his middle school baseball team. She states that he was picked on because he was smaller and younger than the other kids on the team, but there has to be a more definite reason as to why he was really bullied. How was he really different, there must have been a real reason? I felt as if she spoke she stumbled at times to really explain why her son was bullied, maybe she was ashamed. Regardless her son was bullied and committed suicide because of it. The school system had no structure of how to deal with bulling. The adults seemed to almost ignore it, and figured kid will be kids. However, there was no intervention or consequences towards the students that were causing Jared social and emotional harm. The mother didn’t state weather the adults were informed previously by Jared. Maybe Jared was embarrassed as well. It all ended when Jared was physically beaten by one of the leaders (kids) that was initiating the bullying. As a teacher and the school that I work for Eastern Suffolk BOCES, we are 100% against bullying. From personnel stand point as soon as I hear a student begin to make fun of or bully another student I stop them in their own tracks. It ends just as fast as it began. I generally separate the two students and discuss with them why they showed this type of behavior. Depending on the severity of the situation if a consequence is needed I will implement it. Most of the time the student will lose their privilege or reward. At BOCES we use the reward system for any of our students. I would say that 90% of the time it is effective. As I did some research on bullying I found 3 very interesting articles. The first titled “When the Cyberbuly is You”, written by Nick Bilton. The article discusses how cyber bullying is all around us, which is in fact true. We hear it on radio shows, movies, books, talks, tv shows, blogs, book reviews, and mostly on social media. The main obstacle of bullying is the lack of empathy that people have for others. As expressed in the article psychologist suggest that empathy is learned in 2 ways. The first is by hearing, seeing, or even smelling. The other way is experiencing something painful to yourself. How do we expected kids to not bully one other when it’s all over the place literally. Kids learn from their elders. The environment that we are creating is not the schools fault entirely I blame it on society as well. Another article that I found to be interesting is titled “Bullying by Peers has Effects later Life” written by Ashley Strickland. Adolescents who are bullied by their peers actually suffer from worse long term mental health effects than children who are maltreated by adults. This I can agree with that if a kid hears an adult criticizing another kid, the group of kids will view it as acceptable. Dr. Dieter Wolke states that children tend to spend more time with their peers, its stands to reason that if they have negative relationships with one another, the effects could be severe and long lasting. Also, children that are maltreated by adults were more likely to be bullied. Researchers discovered that children who were bullied are more likely to suffer from anxiety, depression and consider self-harm and suicide later in life. I can agree that a lot of the students that I deal with were previously bullied at their district hence why they are at BOCES due to high anxiety issues. One of the main underlying reasons of why bullying exist is due to division and misunderstanding because they highlight differences. If children don’t understand those differences then it can form negative associations. Bullying, the study suggest isa global issue. It is particularly prevenient in countries where there are rigid class divisions between higher and lower income families, as stated by Wolke. I can agree with this in terms of a more well off kid criticizing someone for not having new equipment or clothing. Some kids just don’t understand that not every ones parent can afford new clothes; kids need to be educated on this matter and learn to respect that people are different, and shouldn’t be judged on their social class.

Works Cited

Bidwell, A. (2015, May 15). School Bullying, Cyberbullying Continue to Drop.

Bilton, N. (2015, April 29). When the Cyberbully Is You. In The New York Times.

Strickland, A. (2015, May 8). Bullying by Peers has Effects later in Life. In CNN.