A boy the bullies love to beat up is the frustrating tale of Billy Wolfe, a high school student at Fayetteville High School in Fayetteville, Arkansas. Billy is one of those kids that looks fairly average to those of us long out of high school, but looks quite different to a certain other kind of kid. To his aggressors, he looks like a target.
You’ve got to wonder how it is that after so many years of school yard bullies, schools have not figured out how to create safe learning environments for kids. From guns to ridicule to violence, it’s little wonder that things like the home schooling movement get legs even outside of conservative or fundamentalist religious circles.
Billy’s story is the kind of story that school professionals know too well and don’t know what to do with. I get that sense from the training I do on suicide prevention in public schools around New Jersey. I always point out that being bullied increases a student’s risk for suicide, and always there are reactions from teachers. They know both the bullies and the bullied, but they seem frustrated with how those situations are handled in their schools.
Zero tolerance doesn’t seem to cut it. Otherwise, since the tragedy of Columbine you’d think bullying and school violence would be less, not more of an issue. Nor does the policy of “pretend it doesn’t exist,” which I hear too often from teachers who quietly speak their frustration and anxiety over the issue to me when the training sessions end.
After reading the above mentioned New York Times article, I searched for some NJ resources on bullying. One good one seems to be the New Jersey Coalition for Bullying. There you can find a lot of important information, from legislation to research abstracts to meetings. They also have information on cyberbullying, which is a whole brave new world of youth intimidation through places like AIM, myspace, facebook, and live journal.
A site for kids is the US Health and Human Resources Administration’s site, Stop Bullying Now! This site has a bunch of information for young people, including what to do if you are being harassed, what to do if you see someone else being bullied, and information for kids to figure out if maybe they are bullies themselves.
We need to all work to create environments for students and faculty alike that promote pro-social behaviors imply safety and respect for all. Meaningful opportunities must be created for all students to participate in school life. School communities must embrace all students – bullied and bullies – in the journey of learning. Consequences for aggressive kids should teach alternative behaviors and seek to bring those students into the school community in a different role whenever possible. As we all know, alienating aggressive kids by trying to simply rid them from our school communities can breed a dangerous resentment.
Yet the kids targeted by bullies need protection as well. They need to know their schools are well supervised. That language and behavior that is seen as disrespectful and intolerant does not go unaddressed by the adults who witness it. That there are viable channels for assistance when feeling unsafe.
All kids need to feel that they are valued by their schools. In my experience working with teenagers, this doesn’t seem to be the case. Of course, I have worked with teens that have had problems, and by and large these are the youth who most need the school’s support and while they may get it in terms of dollars, often don’t in terms of opportunities and relationships.
But addressing school violence and bullying behavior isn’t just a job for schools. All adults need to participate in creating a culture that teaches young people the value of respect for one another. Parents, aunts, uncles, professionals, family friends can all play a role in helping our young people make sense of the world around them. Those kids are watching us, all the time. What do we teach by our examples?
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