Week 4

If you were born before the 80s, you remember the glory days of going to school and then coming home and leaving the teachers and (possibly) the dirty looks behind. My parents told me to ignore anyone who was mean and to have “thick skin.” (My hair was unruly, I thought my nose was too big, and I was heavier than most of my friends). I heeded their advice, but I was also able to come home after the last bell and think nothing of the school day. Today, there is no escape.

I asked another teacher what she thought the solution to cyberbullying was. Her response: “Destroy all social media and take away phones.” Yes, I suppose that would work, but that isn’t going to happen. We cannot blame technology for cyberbullying, but its usage is something that clearly needs to be addressed with students. Social media is not going away. It has become a space for teens and preteens to gather just like malls and parks were our place (Boyd, 2014). The fears of this new technological space that adults sometimes have is sometimes warranted, but no more so than the fears my parents had when I broke curfew. So what’s the answer? How do we as a society end cyberbullying?

Atticus Finch. Keep your head high, fists down, and crawl around in someone else’s skin for awhile. When in doubt, just turn to one of America’s most heralded literary characters. Now, quite possibly more than ever, we need to be teaching our students empathy and acceptance. If teaching could be less about the books and more about how to treat one another, maybe we wouldn’t have to read another story like Tyler Clementi’s.

In order to teach empathy, one must model empathy. Teachers and administration have to show students what it looks like to be kind and care for everyone - we have no control over what is happening at home, but we can create a safe space for students. This has to be a priority.

Additionally, schools need to be much more involved in teaching our digital natives the appropriate online behavior. “Snyping” awkward pictures of classmates is not okay. Spreading hurtful rumors is not okay. The accessibility to information and the persistence of the information online contributes to the ease of cyberbullying. The bystanders are no longer just the people who witnessed the teasing, but now it’s out there for an entire school, community, world to see. There is no escaping a tormenter anymore. Digital citizenship needs to be taught starting in grade school and continued throughout secondary school.

What else is missing? A sense of community, a sense of belonging. Teachers spend so much time focused on the test, that we often lose sight of what’s more important. Teens are searching for their place in society - we have to help them find it.

I don’t know what the answer is. But I will continue to teach empathy and engrain in their malleable brains that “other people matter.”

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Reference

Boyd, D. (2014). It’s complicated: The social lives of networked teens. Yale University Press.