Cyberbullying

I see cyberbullying as a very sinister act as people are able to hide behind an electronic veil and avoid many of the societal rules that we rely upon to keep the peace between individuals. Cyberbullying is the act of committing intentional emotional harm through the use of any form of electronic communication. This includes many of the common Internet devices; email, instant messaging, blogs, social networking sites and chat rooms. The emotional harm can involve harassment, intimidation, and insults. I do believe that most cyberbullying intentional targets someone the bully knows; however, my own personal experience has shown me that there are just some people out on the Internet that see anyone on the web as a target. Most of my experience in this area has been completely random.

About a year ago my daughter and I started playing an online game World of Warcraft. Before playing we had a conversation about how this game was not like the supervised sites she had played on in the past. We went over the rules for being on the Internet and not sharing personal information with strangers. I expected people to play to win on the game; however, I could not predict how certain players would intentionally bully others or send abusive messages. This bullying was completely random and quite common. My daughter and I would talk about incidents when they arose and many times she had already reported the person’s behavior through the game. I found it quite distressing at the time that people felt fine bullying complete strangers. Although I have pretty web smart kid, it did wake me up to the fact that the Internet is a pretty wild place. That in our constant push for electronic freedom we, as a society, no longer feel constrained by responsibility or empathy on the World Wide Web.

I am amazed on a daily basis that children are entering the internet at an ever increasing younger age. I know of many nine to ten year olds that have Facebook pages, are constantly texting each other and literally never turn off their computers. When I was a student the only place that had computer was the school. Now children have them in their pocket and schools face the challenge of trying to regulate a world outside of their walls. Web anonymity, free speech and regulation of student conduct outside of school are just some of the issues confronting schools today. Court cases such as Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District (1969). Have challenged school administrators that want to protect children yet, at the same time a face the fact that a ‘school may only restrict student speech that causes a substantial and material disruption of school activities because students do not shed their constitutional rights, including their right to free speech, at the schoolhouse gate” (Taylor, 2009,p61).

My plan for dealing with cyberbullying in my classroom will be to tie my rules and expectations to student’s behavior in the classroom to that on the internet. Part of the first day of class will be spent in just learning how my students communicate electronically. I would like to know who has access to the Internet, what their email addresses are, and what web sites they like to visit. When I was in school we would talk about what arcades and malls we frequented. Now it is all online but still the same topics.

Then this would lead into the topic of bullying and how regardless of how it is done and wherever you are at, it is not acceptable. I would share the secret with the kids that everything put out over the Internet is there forever and even if you think bullying is anonymous, you need to know that reporting it can be very easy and just a click away. I think that we can only be preemptive in that we establish rules for behavior as we cannot control net access outside of school; however, any cyberbullying needs to be dealt with extremely quickly. I believe that discipline needs to be directed at individuals and should include those students that participated passively by not reporting issues. All too often innocent kids get caught up punishment and I feel that group punishment shows a lack of respect for the individual. Finally, as teachers we will are going to see the affects of the outside world on our students in the classroom. Abuse, emotional distress, problems with friends and personal conflicts will all be played out in front of us. As teachers we need to have an aware of the different interactions within our classroom and provide a safe place for students to report bullying. We need to quickly deal with all bullying by involving parents and students. My plan would be to attack problems as a group, bringing as much light on the matter as possible.