Preventing Bullying in School

“Researchers have conducted that at least 25% of all children will be affected by bullying at some point during their school years, and many of these children miss significant numbers of school days each year owing to fear of being bullied” (Bray, M., Kehle, T., Sassu, K. (2003). Bullying has become a major problem for our students and our schools. Children are missing educational time and are losing self-confidence because they are afraid or intimidated by other students. We, as teachers, need to reduce bullying in our schools and prevent bullying from being a reoccurring issue in the lives of our students in order for them to learn, grow and develop. Our goal as teachers should be “to reduce as much as possible-ideally to eliminate completely- existing bully/victim problems in and out of the school setting and to prevent the development of new problems” (Olweus, D. (1993).

Bullying is defined as the use of force, threat, or coercion to abuse, intimidate, or aggressively to impose domination over others and is often repeated and habitual. Bullying is something that can manifest in all kinds of places whether it be at home, school, or in the community. There are different ways that bullying can manifest at home. For example, we often hear of fathers trying to “toughen up” their sons up and make them into a man, when in reality, they are bullying their children to make them tough. Parents often allow their sons to be aggressive and rough and find it appropriate for them to physically hurt other people. They often say “boys will be boys” as if that behavior is normal and okay. Well, it is not normal or appropriate behavior, that kind of behavior is only teaching them to be aggressive in society and to bully other people. This type ...

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...ying to occur in her classroom, but I didn’t have the skills or knowledge to go about stopping it. Now I do.

Works Cited

Boyle, D.J. (2005). Youth Bullying: Incidence, Impact, and Interventions. Journal of the

New Jersey Psychological Association, 55(3), 22-24.

Cook, C., Guerra, N., Kim, T., Sadek, S., Williams, K. (2010). Predictors of bullying and victimization in childhood and adolescence: a meta-analytic investigation. School Psychology Quarterly, Vol. 25, No. 2, 65-83.

Gartrell, D., Jochum, J. (2008). Guidance matters: understand bullying. Young Children 1-6.

Olweus, D. (1993). Bullying at schools: What we know and what we can do. Cambridge, MA:

Blackwell Publishers.

Bray, M., Kehle, T., Sassu, K. (2003). Bullies and victoms: information for parents- ensuring a healthy start promoting a healthy future. National Association of School Psychologists 1-3.