Bullying effects on education

Cheyenne Lopez
Kathleen Nguyen
EDCI 2030-03
December 5th, 2014
Bullying: Effects on Education We chose to do our final project and paper on bullying and its effect on students and their education. Bullying is a huge problem that presses our nation and is sometimes an issue that people try to avoid dealing with. We chose this topic because bullying is a concern that almost every student faces at some time throughout his or her schooling. Bullying not only happens to students in schools, but it is also a problem that some people face on a day to day basis whether it is at work, home, in a public setting, or at school. Another reason we chose to look into this topic is because some students, or even adults, do not realize that their actions are in fact, bullying. We wanted to take a chance to help inform people on a very dark problem. Bullying can come in many different forms. There are six main categories of bullying which are; physical bullying, verbal bullying, stealing or damaging of items, cyber bullying, sexual harassment, and or racial discrimination. A lot of students partake in these actions and do not even realize they are bullying someone. Bullying happens every day in schools, and one in seven students in grade K-12 is either a bully or a victim of bullying. Bullying can turn students into lethal violence in the schools, and this makes the school environment dangerous and fearful. An astonishing amount of 15% of all absenteeism is directly related to fears of being bullied in school. I think this is a terrible thing! Schools should not be a place that students feel they have to fear their safety. School is intended to be a safe and fun learning environment, and I think we should all strive to make this possible! We went out and collected data to support our topic and gather information. We collected our data in two different ways. An online survey created through Survey Monkey was sent out to Merryville High School, a public school K-12. This survey was designed for the teachers and staff of the school, in order to get a perspective on bullying from a faculty viewpoint. Another method of collecting data we used was sending out an anonymous survey to three high school classes at Baton Rouge Magnet High School. We chose to use this methodology to gather information because we felt this would give us an opportunity to get feedback from different perspectives on the issue at hand. The students’ and the teachers’ opinions are both equally important on the question of education being effected by bullying. The survey sent out to the teachers of Merryville was online. 72% of the responders had been working at the school for 10 or more years, which means they have significant experience in a school setting and environment. Throughout all the questions asked, two themes were reoccurring. One common theme was that bullying mostly occurred in places with less supervision. When specifically asked to rank the locations where bullying has been seen at, the top three with the highest frequency were hallways, school busses, and playgrounds. Obviously, these three locations are places that the students to teacher ratio are largely disproportionate. In these settings there are far more students than supervising adults, which seems to be why they are such “hotspots” for bullying to occur. Another interesting outcome was the forms of bullying that are most common. After compiling all the teachers’ responses, we found that verbal bullying was the form of bullying most often used. Closely following verbal bullying were damaging and stealing of others property and physical bullying. Both of these themes of places for and types of bullying were consistent throughout all the surveys taken by Merryville’s faculty. When asked to describe situations they have seen in which bullying effected a child education, we got some alarming replies. Most all the teacher agreed that when a student is bullied he or she will experience a decrease in their drive for educations and their overall performance. The teachers stated that students will begin to desire dropping out, will not want to interact with other students, their cognitive function and confidence will decrease if the bullying increases without interventions, etc. These are all examples that the staff has witnessed happen to students that have been bullied. One of the most shocking replies by one of the teachers was, “The student is more scared of what someone will do/say to them, that they really do not care about the education. It is more about survival.” This quote definitely brings us back to the main reason we chose this topic. Schools should never be a place where students are fearful and are so focused on survival they lose grasp of the educational values and purposes. Our other method of collecting data was the survey handed out anonymously to students at Baton Rouge Magnet High School. The data was gathered from three different grades, 10th grade, 11th grade, and 12th grade, to get a variety of answers. The survey mainly focused on the bullying that happens at their school, if the students have experienced being bullied, and if they believe that the teachers are aware of the bullying that goes on at the school. Majority of the students believe that bullying is not a huge and ongoing problem at their school, though some students did answer that it is. When asked what kind of bullying the students most often face, over half of them answered that they have experienced verbal bullying. Some may think that words do not hurt as much as physical bullying but the damage is just as bad. The survey also asked the students what they think the reasons for them getting bullied were. Out of the data collected from the 10th grade class, 13 out of the 28 students believed that they were bullied because of their color or race, and or their size. This is just the numbers from one classroom, imagine how large the number would be if we let the entire school take this survey! From the information we got from the 11th graders, 12 out of the 31 students would ignore the situation when they would get bullied. Ignoring the bully can be a good step from preventing something worse happening, but the number one thing to do is to tell someone. In the 12th grade class, 12 out of the 30 students believe that the teachers at this school are aware of the bullying that takes place on campus. Those figures are a little less than half of the classroom, but all students should feel comfortable and believe that their teachers are aware of the bullying happening in between class changes, lunch time, before, and after school. We both agree that whenever we become teachers, we would want to be aware of the bullying that takes place at our schools so we can try to prevent it. As teachers overall, we believe that teachers and staff should maintain constant monitoring in cafeterias, playgrounds, and the “hot spots” where bullying might occur. We think that teachers should develop an action plan on what students should do if they witness someone else being bullied or if they are confronted by a bully themselves. Another very important suggestion we believe all faculties of schools should do is to inform parents about bullying and the consequences that comes along with it. We consider this to be critical because some parents are not aware of the actions that their children carry out at school, and that the parents might strongly believe that their children are well behaved even though that student might be a bully. The topic we chose can relate to many of the readings that was assigned to us over this course. We related bullying to Adam Howard’s article “Learning Privilege” and to Lisa Delpit’s “I Just Want to Be Myself.” Adam experienced bullying when he was attending school as a child. He came from a poor family that did not have the family support to learn what they thought he needed to learn. The teachers and students at school labeled him unable to learn without even really knowing what was really going on. This is a sign of bullying because it is a form of verbal bullying. The people labeling him are so quick to call Adam unable to learn without really knowing him and do not understand what he is going through. We made a connection to Lisa’s article because of a selection in her passage when she mentioned the “we’s.” Part of the quote stated “When one ‘we’ gets to determine standards of appropriateness for all ‘we’s,’ then some ‘we’s’ are in trouble.” We referred back to our own experiences in school when there were a specific group of students who would make fun or tease other students for not wearing what was in style, not being able to own the newest game that was out, or basically just not fitting in. Bullying is an ongoing problem that everyone faces at least once in their lifetime, even if they do not even know it. For our project, we focused on bullying that happens to children at school, but bullying can happen anywhere. This is a huge problem that most people overlook because it has been touched on too many times, but it needs to have an impact on people. While working on this project, we both found out information that was very shocking to us. We hope that in the future, students, teachers, and parents are more alert and aware about the bullying incidents that may occur at the schools that they are associated with in any way so that the children will feel safe in their learning environment.