After a grueling 4 day stay in sunny Orlando I’m finally back at school today for the first time in nearly two weeks. I went to Orlando to attend the National Conference on Bullying; this conference attracted over 400 individuals from the education and law enforcement communities. Since I did attend this national conference as a part of my work here in Fayetteville, I felt like it would be very appropriate to share some of the things that  I walked away from this confernece with…so here it is, my notes on the bullying conference.

The New Face of Bullying

Bullying is nothing new at all, it is something that we have all grown up with in our lives and understand what it is. However, what is new is how it is being done; in our current world, the internet brings a whole new ease of access to the table. Not just ease of access to information, but also ease of access to individuals…when you have this ease of access and you combine it with how impulsive children are today sometimes it can result in some not so savory outcomes. This is where cyberbullying comes in. One thing that we are going to have to realize as teachers is that cyberbullying does exist and it happens way more than we might like to think that it does. These cyber attacks may not happen not always happen at our school, but when our students are involved in the attacks it effects the learning environment 100% of the time. As teachers we need to start thinking about how we are going to prepare our student to handle cyberbullying situations and how we are going to handle it when it happens.

It’s Not a School Problem…

…it’s everyone’s problem. When people think about bullying it is most commonly view as something that happens at school, therefore making it a problem that teachers and administration should deal with. Because of the fact that so much of bullying happens at school and outside of school we need to change our view point on whose problem it is. A equal partnership has to exist between the school and the home if we ever want to be effective in how we handle any bullying situation.

Policy and Procedure

As teachers and administration we need to make sure that we are clear in how we handle bullying. One session that I listened to primarily focused on how schools fail to handle bullying incidents and how ultimately it really ended up hurting them by way of a lawsuit or even worst a death/suicide. Majority of the cases that were brought up in conversation ended up being huge disasters because the school either took little to no action or did not have an active policy in place. We can’t afford to think that problems such as bullying will simply pass with time, schools have to be active in their approach to this topic and make sure that they react appropriately when incidents arise.

The topic is one that has many different avenues and tons of gray areas…I’ve shared with you my basic thoughts on what I learned this week and if you have anything you would like to contribute to the conversation, please feel free to leave us a comment.

It feels good to be back at school.

Mr. McClung