Monday, February 12, 2007

2nd Blog Entry- George Lucas Site

I read "Fear Factor" by Christina Wood. This article was about the short term and long term effects of bullying on students and how some bullying leads to dead studentsor other violent behavior. The article began by talking about Lakeside Middle School and how it was put on the state's list of "persistently dangerous schools." Everyone at the school and community were surprised by this, but they took this information and put into action a plan to decrease and hopefully eliminate the bullying that did occur in their school. The school already had a program called Peace and Respect Initiative, which provided parties or treats to classes or students for keeping their school fight/bully free.

They decided to be proactive with this new information and they started a program on bullying awareness and prevention and used a Federal grant to implement the Second Step Violence-Prevention Program. Training was provided for staff about bullying intervention and a counselor was hired to work with the students and staff on anger management and behavior issues.

Later in the article there are statistics about the amount of students that have been bullied; 16% of school age children have recently been bullied, 23% threatened, 40% called hurtful names, and 38% hit, kicked or pushed. The article also described a variety of forms of bullying.
Typically bullies choose somebody weaker than them and usually choose to bully them in front of a crowd so they can gain respect and power.It was also emphasized that all prevention programs must work with the school, students, parents and the community because the bullying doesn't stop when the school bell rings at the end of the day.

There are five steps to a successful program:
1. begin with education.
2. move to intervention
3. effort must be vigilant and ongoing
4. a change in the culture of the school
5. maintain this

A separate column within the article described mean girls and what bullying was like for girls. They refer to girl bullying as "relational bullying" because it is social rather than physical. Typically a bully will take action by getting another girl shunned by a large group of girls. This can be really detrimental to a female because the social world is very important to most females and if they don't have it they can feel like they don't have anything.

My Reaction:
I find this article really interesting. It is not unsual to hear about shootings or stabbings in schools because some kid got picked on too much and he/she finally snapped. But I don't typically hear about what the schools are doing to prevent this from occuring. This article has given some light to the types of prevention programs that are out there and how to implement them.

One thing I do not agree with is how this particular Middle School had celebrations or treats for students or classes to help keep the school fight/bully free. I don't think that teaching the kids that if you don't beat someone up or pick on them then you will get some cake or candy is the proper method. I instead think that teaching them about caring and morals or values is a much more valuable lesson. When they leave school there won't be any rewards for keeping your hands to yourself. Another thing I don't agree with is a statement in the section about "Mean Girls." It says that "Bullying by girls-- often called relational bullying-- is social rather than physical" I agree that often it is, but I don't think that we should forget that girls do get physical and we can't assume that it is all verbal just because they are female.

I like the prevention programs because they are a proactive response to the situation...these programs are working to hopfully prevent these problems from occuring instead of waiting to find out about it and then reacting. Another important topic raised in this article is the notion that bullying occurs in multiple forms. I think many people forget that bullying isn't always someone pushing or shoving another person; it can be a gesture, a look, a written note, or showing a weapon. This is especially important for us pre-service teachers to remember because we will have to look out for these signs.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

While reading about the article on your blog I had similar feelings toward the idea of providing students with treats and parties for behaving. Although positivie reinforcement will help encourage model behavior from the studetns, I think that giving students treats (food) may be working against the school's goals. By rewarding the students with food they are essentially bribing their students to behave and teaching them that their good behavior is only worth a piece of candy or a cookie. If the school wants the students to truly learn from the experience and continue to exhibit model behavior then they will need a method that doesn't involve something as trivial as a pizza party. I agree with your comments that teaching values and morals is more important than teaching them to behave for the pay-off.

In response to the comments about "Mean Girls", I think that perhaps the article wanted to highlight the fact that bullying is not just physical violence, but also emotional harm commited by purposely isolating others. You seemed to understand that with further focus on the fact that bullying can range from physical contact to written threats.

I agree with you that as Pre-service teachers we will have to learn to see the signs of bullying the classroom. We will also have to work to teach our classes ways to mediate problems in order to promote values and morals that will stay with them in the future. *Excellent summary about the article!*