Sit with your kids. Sit with your faculty. Sit with your class.
Watch this.
Talk about the role you play in letting this happen.
Talk about what you’re going to do to make it stop.
Tag: bullying
Things I Know 133 of 365: Youtube won’t solve bullying
I’m starting to feel as though our plan for fighting school bullying is to have students create as many youtube videos on the topic as possible and then compliment the hell out of them.
Each time a link to a new bullying video flows through my twitter stream, I can’t help but think we’re missing the point.
We shouldn’t be surprised a student is able to cobble together an emotionally affective video about the pain and suffering of others, of children.
I worry sharing these videos masquerades in the minds of some as actually working against the deeper causes and effects of bullying.
In understand the instinct to share these videos. What I miss and wish was an equally prevalent instinct was to follow up the posting of these videos with reflections as to what we are doing and should be doing about bullying.
Instead of “This is a powerful student video about bullying,” I wish there were more, “This is a powerful student video about bullying as well as a link to my thinking about my own thinking on the topic and what I can do to prevent bullying in the classroom.”
Maybe that’s the implied conversation, and I’m just missing it.
I don’t think so. A quick search of my RSS feeds returns only 44 instances of “bully” and only two of those posts are from teachers talking about bullying prevention. Here is one you should read.
In a network of some of the most vocal proponents of social learning, two hits.
Where are the voices?
Where is the deeper discussion we’re always championing?
Where are we talking about what we’re doing to stop and prevent bullying in our classrooms?
Thinking these videos are stopping bullying strikes me as just as dangerous as hoping a young Helen Hunt on angel dust would win the war on drugs.
Anti-Bullying Resources for Teachers:
- Anti-Bullying Network – http://www.antibullying.net/adultsinschools.htm
- Gay, Lesbian, & Straight Education Network – http://www.glsen.org/cgi-bin/iowa/all/antibullying/index.html
- Teaching Tolerance – http://www.tolerance.org/activities?keys=bullying&level=All&subject=All
What else?