Bullying Prevention Policy

In order to stop the relentless bullying of their students, many schools are implementing bullying awareness programs for students, and the community, to

All schools are required by law to have measures in place to prevent bullying and most schools have a zero policy to it. We must also be aware of our own settings policy and procedures for bullying incidents and ensure that we always uphold these policies. If we do this then it leads to trust that the school and the staff take bullying seriously and will not allow it, thus giving the children and young people confidence to report any bullying incidents in confidence, knowing that it will then be looked into.

One child out of two in grades four thru twelve have all reported being bullied. The cases of bullying being reported does trend down as the child gets older (Stop Bullying.gov). Children and teens that are abnormal or considered to be different from others seem to be targeted by the bully most frequently. The LGBT community (gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender), individuals who are obese, students with disabilities, or students known to be weak or viewed as inferior are the most frequently under attack. The LGBT community is more likely to have ideation or attempt suicide because of bullying than their heterosexual classmates (Suicide Prevention Resource Center, 2014).

Bullying is defined as “verbal, physical, or psychological abuse or teasing accompanied by real or perceived imbalance of power” and is usually targets what children perceive as different (Olweus, 1993). Bullying is prevalent across the nation. It has devastating effects on students each day. Bullying is a problem for all students, regardless of race, gender or class. The National Education Association reports that 160,000 children are absent intentionally from school each day because they fear being bullied whether it is an attack or just intimidation by other students. This accounts for 15% of all school absenteeism (Hunter, 2012). Dan Olweus (1993) from the National School Safety Center tells us that bullying includes three parts: (1)

One important cause for the state or federal government to put laws in school to prevent bullying is make children safer in school. Temkin (2003) writes about the intention of the Senator Bob Casey want to introduce the Safe Schools Improvement Act. The time to pass this bill is now for making children feel safe and empowered in school. The U.S Department of Education showed that shown to be effective in reducing bullying. It is known that the horrible effects child abuse can have on a child’s current and future well

The state of New Jersey passed Anti-Bullying Bill of Rights Act in 2011 to reduce school bullying. The Anti-Bullying Bill of Rights Act, which is Chapter 122, is “an Act concerning harassment, intimidation, and bullying in school settings, amending various parts of the statutory law and supplementing”. After learned the current situation of bullying in the United States, and compared the rates of bullying to New Jersey, realized the benefits of anti-bullying regulations have on youths, parents, teachers, school stuffs, and so on, and the history of successfully implemented public school anti-bullying statutes in 2002, legislators in New Jersey saw the needs and being confident of enacting the Anti-Bullying Bill of Rights Act (C.18A: 37-13.1).

One of the easiest ways in order to eliminate the frequency of bullying would be to implement very strong anti-bullying programs in schools, this is the place where many children spend most of their days aside from home, these programs should be effective on a various amount of cases. Michael Morrow did research on elementary school anti-bullying programs and wrote the article “Consultation in Bullying Prevention: An Elementary School Case Study.” This article looked at the various research that has been done on anti-bullying programs and the papers that have been written about it. “Multiple prevention programs have been developed and utilized around the world to address bullying in schools and many employ a schoolwide or whole-community approach. While these programs share similar features, they also vary in numerous ways, most notably in their specific components” (Morrow, 2015, p. 87). There are programs that are implemented that may

I will start by describing the biological dimensions of bullying victims, perpetrators, and bully-victims. Carpanzo et al. (2011) asserts that there are gender differences in bullying. While both biological genders participate equally in relational and physical aggression according to the study, physical aggression is more common in boys but relational aggression is equal between the sexes. Bullying was more stable across a two-year period and weighed more heavily on individual personality characteristics with the males in the study and girls were more influenced into participating in bullying behavior by social norms. A study by Fu et al. (2012) examined bullying victimization in twelfth graders between 1989 and 2009. The study aimed to find repetitive risk factors concerning socioeconomic status and behavioral characteristics. The result of the study

If unaddressed, victims of bullies can evolve into the role of a bully. Boys in the general education classroom are more likely to bully other students in the manner of physical altercations. As students age, the bullying transforms into a social, calculated, vindictive and humiliating assault. Girls in the general education classroom are more to bully other students when they have a following. Girls seek support from peers to unite in victimization and encourage victim isolation and alienation.

Despite current TDSB anti-bullying policies in association with their ’Bullying Prevention and Intervention’ website, interventive techniques were unrefined. The lack of interventive incentive stems to the issue of the nature of cyberbullying which occurs predominantly outside the administrative gaze. The degree of administrative paternalism in managing actions or circumstances of bullying negates the individual victim 's ability to negotiate, associate and resolve victim-bully interaction. By neglecting any communicable efforts in TDSB policy for the bully to participate in remedial efforts, excluding judiciary platforms, the victim is deprived of enriching self-reliant methods in dealing with bullying. Such is the outcome of certain cyberbullying incidents where, despite the plethora of online support services, the cyber victim opts to block over confronting the bully (Perreault). The comment has been made, however, and the pain is still residual. Blocking is just as unhealthy as ignoring or bottling the pain that has been caused. Targets of bullying do not need to develop a thicker skin, they need to learn how to bypass the bully’s. Part of the concern is the current marginality of research inquiry distinguishing between the elemental differences of traditional bullying (TB) and cyberbullying (CB). The essay goes into depth explaining the polarity between the two types of bullying. TB and CB are dialect opposites, albeit, the online nature of CB may elucidate to

The article broke bullying into three main characteristics: behavioral, psychological, and physical. When looking into statistics of the physical characteristics, the children being bullied seemed to be smaller, and appeared weak to the bullies. As for the bullies, this allowed them to feel stronger and to have more power. When breaking it down to gender differences, boys seem to be more affected by bullying than girls do. Boys are also more likely to bully girls than girls bully girls. According to the articles statistics, being bullied can cause a great amount of psychological issues, as depression being the number one illness.

Over 3.2 million students are victims of bullying each year. 17 percent of American students reported bullies 2 to 3 times a month or more within a school semester. Physical bullying increases in elementary school, peaks in middle school and declines in high school. Verbal abuse on the other hand remains constant.

One of the most undeniable reasons why schools should protect the safety of students is bullying. Bullying is everywhere in this country and the students are victimized daily by this type of behavior. The act of bullying comes in many forms. Physical violence, poking, kicking, pushing is a form of direct bullying. Verbal bullying, name calling, and teasing is another form of indirect bullying. Basically, excluding a person from a peer group (Scarpaci,2006; Reid, Monsen,& Rivers,2004). Children between the ages of 9-15 are most often bullied. Research by Cohen (2015) states, since the early 1990s there have been more fatal school shootings due to this type of harassment. Prevention of this type of behavior educators as well as parents are working together to identity the characteristics of bullies and victims to stop this violence.

Sociological theories, concepts, and studies provide a greater purpose and function more than just being products of academic and research extension work. Work in policy development is where usually these theories and studies are translated into policy recommendations and if lobbied and defended with strong support from key and influential individuals and groups, could actually lead to legislative action. Indeed, the conversion of theory to policy is a process that drives sociologists and social researchers to explore, determine, and understand more social phenomena that would create great impact to the society in general.

Experience of being a victim of bullying can finally damage the mental health of students and motivate them to commit school violence. "According to statistics in two-thirds of cases of the recent school shootings, the attackers had previously been bullied" (Sampson, 2009, p.1). For most children learning process itself may already be a daily struggle and being a target for bullying at the same time can become "the straw that broke the camel's back", after which they consider suicide as the only possible solution. "A study in Britain found that at least half of suicides among young people are related to bullying" (Detlor, 2010). So, due to the fact that problem of bullying negatively affects students' learning ability, their health and the entire school climate society should take definite and urgent measures to solve it.