When the Bully Gets Bullied

Every year our school conducts what has come to be known as “The Bully Poll.” Teaching Tolerance also offers an activity [2] 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?

Ironically, this year the biggest bully in the sixth grade turned out to be the smallest student.

Zachary is a small, defensive, street-smart kid with a huge chip on his shoulder. His bullying is not overt or blatant. It’s rather sly, quiet and done with a smile. He pokes people. He mocks people. He whispers insults and threats just out of earshot of the teacher and strikes fear with the simplest of looks or tiniest of gestures. He starts rumors about people and causes fights between other people.

He is a pot stirrer; he stirs up that pot, stands back watching what bubbles to the surface. Zach enjoys the chaos he creates. Parents call the school regularly to report him, or complain about him or have their child moved away from him. He is the epitome of a bully and the truth is; he thinks it’s funny.

Then one day he arrived at my classroom with tears pooled in his eyes, dangerously close to cascading down his cheeks. Initially, I was confused. Zach usually makes people cry, not the other way around. And the reason for the tears did not come easily. After some careful questioning, gentle prodding and overall tooth pulling, the story came tumbling out in a burst of disjointed sobbing and barely concealed rage. It seemed the bully had been bullied.

Zach had reached down to retrieve a pencil that had rolled off his desk when he inadvertently banged heads with another boy on the same mission. This resulted in the rest of the boys in class accusing Zach of having kissed Eric, the other boy. They would walk by him in the hallway and shoot questions at him like, “Hey Zach, are you going to make out with Eric again today?”  They taunted him and called him “gay” and “homo” in school and online for almost a week before he finally landed in my classroom with eyes pleading for me to help him. His defiant stance implied he was sure I wouldn’t.

After he spilled the story to me, Zach began to offer a litany of reasons as to why he knew the school wasn’t going to do anything about this. Because he’s black. Because he fails his classes. Because the teachers don’t like him. All of these excuses led him toward his ultimate perception; he believed the school wouldn’t care if he was being bullied because he is a bully.

I assured him, more than once, that I would help him. I would handle it in the same way I would handle any other case of bullying and that the other boys would be punished in the same manner he had been punished multiple times before. But before I did that, I had to ask a favor from him. I asked him to stand there for a minute and think about the way this had made him feel, way deep down inside. The tears pooled back up and spilled over. The nod was barely perceptible, the whisper almost inaudible, “It feels really bad.”

Then I asked him to remember it. Always.

Spain is a middle school language arts teacher in New Jersey.