Alanna Gaylord's Art Education Portfolio

Description:

            Bullying can be defined as unwanted, aggressive behavior among school aged children that involves a real or perceived power imbalance. The behavior is repeated, or has the potential to be repeated, over time. Bullying includes actions, in person and on the internet, such as making threats, spreading rumors, attacking someone physically or verbally, and excluding someone from a group on purpose. Verbal bullying can include teasing, name-calling, inappropriate sexual comments, taunting, and threatening to cause harm. Social bullying, sometimes referred to as relational bullying, involves hurting someone’s reputation or relationships and can include leaving someone out on purpose, telling other children not to be friends with someone, spreading rumors about someone, and embarrassing someone in public. Physical bullying involves hurting a person’s body or possessions and can include hitting/kicking/pinching, spitting, tripping/pushing, taking or breaking someone’s belongings, and making mean or rude hand gestures. Cyber bullying involves hurtful or embarrassing messages to or about someone using the internet or cell phones and can include sexting and circulating suggestive or nude photos or messages about a person. Bullying can threaten students’ physical and emotional safety at school and can negatively impact their ability to learn.

 

Analysis:

            The best way to address bullying is to stop it before it starts. There are a number of things teachers can do to make schools safer and prevent bullying. First and foremost, it is very important for all teachers to thoroughly review their school’s prevention and intervention efforts and well as policies and rules around bullying. Teachers and staff should be trained on the school’s rules and policies and be provided the skills to intervene consistently and appropriately. These policies and rules help to establish a climate in which bullying is not acceptable and help to build a safe environment. It should be a teacher’s goal to establish a school culture of acceptance, tolerance and respect. Consequently, teachers should use staff meetings, assemblies, class and parents meetings, newsletters to families, the school website, and the student handbook to establish a positive climate at school and to educate the school community on bullying prevention. To emphasize an anti-bullying climate, teachers and staff should incorporate bullying prevention material into the curriculum and school activities and teachers should be sure to reinforce positive social interactions and inclusiveness.

In order to be sure that a school’s system in successful, it will be important for teachers to assess bullying in their school to determine how often bullying occurs, where it happens, how students and adults intervene, and whether the prevention efforts are working. This is important because teachers need to know what’s going on in their school. Adults sometimes underestimate the rates of bullying because kids rarely report it and it often happens when adults aren’t around. Assessing bullying through anonymous surveys can provide a clear picture of what is going on. Also, understanding trends and types of bullying in the school can help the teacher plan bullying prevention and intervention efforts, as well as measuring efforts over time in order to determine if the prevention and intervention efforts are really working.

 

Reflection:

            During my teaching at Albert D. Lawton Intermediate school, I was fortunate enough to not have to experience any substantial bullying situations. I found the school climate to be very positive and it was evident that ADL faculty members work to support and provide for students as well as cultivate positive rapports and culture. However, despite the amount of effort a staff puts in to prevent bullying and harassment in a school, it still persists. In the art room, for the few bullying situations that I did experience, I found it was very important and beneficial to have all the students who were involved in the situation to sit down and engage in an open and safe discussion. This allows for each student to state his or her own perspective on the situation as well as see and work to understand the perspectives of the other students involved. Seeing where others are coming from and understanding someone else’s perspective may not entirely fix all problems, but it is at least working towards understanding someone else’s actions, which can help to understand how to prevent the situation in the future. Of course, simple face-to-face incidents are not the only kind of bullying and harassment that exists in public schools, and it is very important to be conscious and mindful of what can go on outside of school and on the Internet. It is also important to note that bullying can also have legal implications and it is important to report to administrators and guidance counselors any targeted behavior that appears to happen. I have found that it is extremely important to know my students well and to check in with them if something ever seems off. In cases like these it is absolutely worth it to be safe rather than sorry.