Cyberbullying

Cyberbullying is a means of people tormenting other people via online 'social networking' sites or online communication tools.

I have had a few encounters of cyberbullying that left very lasting impressions on me. The first and most devastating was while in high school, I had a 'live journal' which was basically a blog that you wrote about random teenage happenings. All of my friends had one and encouraged me to start one. Not soon after I did, I started receiving very harsh comments on my blog. I was always teased a lot in school and the teasing continued online. People left scathing anonymous comments on this blog that upset and disturbed me so much that I closed the account and never looked at it again.

Fast forward to my freshman year of college when I was still using AOL Instant Messenger. I had a stalker my freshman year of college and one of the ways he got in contact with me was by finding out my 'screen name' through his roommate's computer, then would instant message me creepy things. When I would block him, he would just create a different name. And a different name. And a different name. It was insane. When both of these incidents happened, I was definitely not thinking at the time "Oh gosh, those cyberbulliers again!" Instead it was just a feeling of being lost and devastated. I don't even know if the term cyberbullying was around when I was in high school.

The biggest problem that school face in dealing with cyberbullying is that most of it happens off of school grounds, so how can they punish students for things that are happening outside of school? Many schools are now implementing cyberbullying rules into their anti-harassment policies. I think one of the biggest hang-ups with the whole issue is that kids may never report it. I never told anyone in high school that I was being tortured through my online journal. I didn't think there was anything anyone could do about it.

I think that schools should most definitely step in and take a stand against cyberbullying. Kids being mean to each other at school is one thing, and getting threatened is a huge problem, but to be in your own home where you should feel safe and receive this vicious text on your computer screen? It's horrific.

I think that not only in my classroom, but all over the school, there should be posters encouraging students who are cyber bullied to come forward and tell an adult. Many students probably don't even know that they can get help. In my classroom I will just have an adult discussion with my students sometime towards the beginning of the year addressing the issue and show some of the articles about teens that have killed themselves and cyberbullying was involved. I might also send a letter home to the parents to be aware and just keep an eye out when their child is online if they are looking really upset while on the computer at some point. This is a hugely important issue that schools and teachers should definitely get involved in.