Bullying is aggressive behavior among people that involves a real/perceived power imbalance, which has potential to be repeated over time. Every day students are being bullied online or face to face. Over 3.2 million people are bullied each year with 17% of American students reporting that they are bullied 2 to 3 times a month or more within a semester. One in every four teachers will see nothing wrong with bullying and will only take action 4% of the time, which results in 67% of students believing that schools respond poorly to bullying (https://www.dosomething.org/us/facts/11-facts-about-bullying). It’s unethical that the majority of teachers just sit around doing nothing when every day there are kids skipping school because they are too afraid to show up or sometimes dropping out. Some teachers may not say anything because they are afraid of the repercussions that may result, but they do not realize that each second they let a student be bullied, the higher the risk of the student having emotional damage which in the long run could be worse than the repercussions. It is the teacher’s job to be the first line of defense to stop bullying. Teachers are the ones who are able to cut the physical and verbal aspect of bullying down at its root while the parents would only be able to monitor and stop it via internet. Many teachers either notice the bullying and say nothing about it or they just don’t notice anything period. Teachers sometimes undergo specialized training which provides guidance to help them be able to recognize when a child is being a bully or is being bullied, but what’s the point if they aren’t going to actually use it. According to Meline Kevorkian and Robin D’Antona’s 101 Facts about What Everyone Should Know about Bullying, it says “bystanders, both adult and peers, are afraid to step in and assist the target being bullied. Educators need training on bullying prevention to increase their ability and confidence to intervene… Additionally, educators must be trained to recognize the signs that a student had been bullied…,” (p.16). 70.6 % of teachers have seen bullying happening in their schools and only 57% of the time someone intervenes. If most of the bullying, which is verbal and/or physical happens at school the teachers should be the ones who stop it. The parents can only do so much to prevent or curtail bullying activities since they aren’t there physically, but teachers are usually firsthand witnesses to what is happening yet they don’t always report it or even intervene. In Dina Santorelli, Lee Hirsch, and Cynthia Lowen’s Bully: An Action Plan for Teachers, Parents, and Communities to Combat the Bullying Crisis, it describes
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In Jay McGraw’s Jay McGraw 's Life Strategies for Dealing with Bullies, McGraw states “Up to 160,000 students stay home from school each day to avoid a bully. Besides bumps and bruises, flunking (or getting bad grades) is the biggest clue that a kid is getting bullied,” (p.77). In “11 facts about bullying” the student dropout rate is one in ten because of bullying. Though it may not seem like a lot it is 168,967 students dropping out of school in Florida alone (http://www.fldoe.org/core/fileparse.php/7584/urlt/MembershipFPS1516.xls). If the bullying keeps increasing then dropout rates will increase and cause more and more people to earn minimum wage or be below the poverty level due to a lack of education. This would mean lots of students who get bullied will not be able to afford basic necessities or realize the American dream of home ownership during their lifetime. Some students will cope in different ways such as self-harming themselves. A study showed that teenagers that were bullied between the ages of 7-10 were 400% more likely to engage in self-harm than children that weren’t bullied during that age period. Depression and anxiety may be symptoms of bullying which sometimes continues even after the bullying stops. Depression and anxiety could make normal everyday actives such as eating, sleeping, working, and exercising, harder to do and could sometimes lead to suicide. For example, in September 2013 a girl named Rebecca Sedwick, 12 years old, jumped to her death from atop an abandoned cement silo after a year and a half of bullying. If the teachers don’t even try and stop or intervene the bullying then these side effects of bullying will
In Jay McGraw’s Jay McGraw 's Life Strategies for Dealing with Bullies, McGraw states “Up to 160,000 students stay home from school each day to avoid a bully. Besides bumps and bruises, flunking (or getting bad grades) is the biggest clue that a kid is getting bullied,” (p.77). In “11 facts about bullying” the student dropout rate is one in ten because of bullying. Though it may not seem like a lot it is 168,967 students dropping out of school in Florida alone (http://www.fldoe.org/core/fileparse.php/7584/urlt/MembershipFPS1516.xls). If the bullying keeps increasing then dropout rates will increase and cause more and more people to earn minimum wage or be below the poverty level due to a lack of education. This would mean lots of students who get bullied will not be able to afford basic necessities or realize the American dream of home ownership during their lifetime. Some students will cope in different ways such as self-harming themselves. A study showed that teenagers that were bullied between the ages of 7-10 were 400% more likely to engage in self-harm than children that weren’t bullied during that age period. Depression and anxiety may be symptoms of bullying which sometimes continues even after the bullying stops. Depression and anxiety could make normal everyday actives such as eating, sleeping, working, and exercising, harder to do and could sometimes lead to suicide. For example, in September 2013 a girl named Rebecca Sedwick, 12 years old, jumped to her death from atop an abandoned cement silo after a year and a half of bullying. If the teachers don’t even try and stop or intervene the bullying then these side effects of bullying will