A few weeks ago, I came across this video when a friend posted it on my Facebook. (You should watch the video before reading further). I am studying abroad this summer in Australia, so he just sent it to me as a "ha ha, look at what you're going to have to deal with" kind of thing, but this video really struck me.
The first time I watched this video, I was shocked. I watched it a second time, and I just could not believe what I was seeing. I have seen cases of bullying in my placement classrooms from name calling and arguments, to yelling and hitting, but I have never seen one child pick up another child and slam him on the ground. I think this is appalling, especially for middle schoolers!
I understand worse things can happen, but this makes me think...What can we do as educators to prevent bullying from going this far? If bullying is starting at such a young age, I feel that there are things that teachers can do to prevent the amount of bullying in school and preventing it from getting this far. If this were to happen, maybe bullying would begin to diminish once children started getting older. I know that we can't live in a perfect world, but I wonder what would happen if steps were taken and bullying was addressed to kids at an earlier age, I wonder if it would decrease or if it would just introduce the issue at an earlier age and make things worse?
I completely agree, when I saw this video for the first time I was disgusted. It is so sad to see this type of behavior is going on. As teachers we need to do our very best to discourage this type of behavior and have zero tolerance for it.
ReplyDelete