As 10/7/2019 was World Day of Bullying Prevention, I thought it would be appropriate to let everyone know how it is addressed in my current school system. I have noticed it for years, but I took yesterday as an opportunity to simply watch and listen each time our students were in the halls between classes. The exercise proved disappointing, disgusting, sad, with very little of anything uplifting. The reason this is now something I have to force myself to do is that we, as the teachers in this school system, have learned to tune out what we see and hear in the halls. We are left with little choice.
We are powerless. If we report what we see and hear nothing is done to the offending student. Instead, we are called to the office to be asked why we were singling out this student for just his/her behavior. Or, even better, we are informed that we misunderstood what was said or done. Why? Simple, if we discipline the students to match the severity of their words and actions they will miss enough time to where they will not pass their state tests or even graduate. To our superintendent, school board, and administrators all that matters are the numbers. As long as our students pass their state tests, and graduate, then we are ok with just about anything else they do.
We have students who are late to class because they are afraid to be in the halls between classes. They wait in their previous class until the halls are almost cleared and then head to their next class. Another example of how our students are not as important as our numbers in this school system. Our students (and teachers) fear coming to school because they no we have taken no steps to prevent or limit the possibility of a school shooting. It is even worse that we have students who fear coming to school because they know we will not protect them from harassment and bullying. This is something we can control, we just choose not to. Until we do take action against this behavior our teen suicide rate will continue to increase. We wonder why our suicide rate continues to grow. The answer is that we allow these students to feel as if there is no other option other than continuing to feel the same hatred and negative interactions with bullying.
Public School Truth 