Bullying

Rodrigue drove me nuts. He stood too close and talked too much. If his hand was raised and I didn’t call on him, his face would contort and he would put his head down on his desk. He answered questions with a “know-it-all” tone that the other students (and I) found obnoxious.

Karl paused at the classroom doorway, his thin face pinched with apprehension as he stared down the hallway. 

“Is everything all right?” I asked.

Startled, he looked at me almost guiltily. “Uh—I’m fine. Everything’s fine.” Karl risked being late by the time he darted out. 

"Don't Be a Bystander,” says one of the anti-bullying posters created by Tualatin High School students. It’s an important message for students to hear.

In an effort to combat the growing bullying crisis, Teacher Rachel Robinson showed her advanced digital arts classes Teaching Tolerance’s film, “Bullied: A Student, a School and a Case That Made History.”

With mainstream media campaigns like It Gets Better and social media efforts to curtail harassment, how is it that another 14-year-old young gay man took his own life? Well, bullies are loud and persistent, and they are still everywhere.

The class was silent as we waited for Samuel to collect himself. It was a respectful silence that happens when everyone knows something powerful is taking place. Samuel’s elbows were on his knees, his head was down. A few tears had fallen.

Our chairs were placed in a circle. A sign posted on our classroom wall read, “Every person in this community is as important as every other person.” We were in the middle of our weekly class meeting, a time when we acknowledge conflicts and work to resolve them as a group. The current topic: name-calling and disrespectful speech.

Hands jut into the crisp autumn air, restricting my field of vision to a sea of shirtsleeves. While this is not an odd phenomenon after a new writing assignment, the types of questions are. “When will we mail it?” and “Can I make
this longer than three paragraphs?” replace heavy sighs of “When is this due, again?”

A teacher notes that a student looks uncharacteristically pale and avoids eye contact with her classmates. When asked privately if she’s OK, the girl bursts into tears, sharing a weekend-long saga of harsh criticism delivered via emails, chats and texts.

“Man that boy booty sweaty!”

The comment rang out in a room that was supposed to be silent. Although the student whose “booty” was being discussed was out of the room and seemingly unscathed by his classmate’s remarks, I knew I had to address this like any other incident of disrespect. Since there are some students (most, I’d wager), who would be made uncomfortable by this type of remark, everyone needs to know that it’s not okay to say such a thing. It’s an opportunity for me to help a teenager hone empathy into a habit.

Every year our school conducts what has come to be known as “The Bully Poll.” Teaching Tolerance also offers an activity to open the discussion about bullying. Our poll is an anonymous questionnaire that enables the students to answer questions openly and honestly about incidents of bullying in our school. Where does bullying most often occur? What do you think about the way in which the school handles bullying? Who is the biggest bully?