Let's prevent bullying at all times

What is really happening around us? Even though I faced some difficult times throughout my classroom experience with teenagers, I strongly feel we can make a difference and change the world for the better as a team. It is just a matter of framing students whenever we feel a mood or words of harassment, wrapping people instead of a hug or a smile. After all, it is our time of sharing and instruction and we cannot allow people talking to others in a harsh way inside or outside the classroom, being mean just for the sake of it, spreading rumors and that kind of stuff. After talking to my students I believe they calm down and realize they need to behave in a community in a healthy way, respecting differences and all that. After being framed with love and respect by their teachers and parents, I believe they can understand they are supposed to be kind to people, no matter what is going on around them. Somehow they start figuring out it is just NOT nice to harrass other people just because they are different or they seem to face life in a different way. They can suddenly realize there is a problem in their own behavior bullying their school buddies and everybody wants to feel loved and respected. Once a bullie is spotted and framed with love and respect about his behavior with others, he or she will face the necessity of changing. I mean, people are watching and noticing their bevavior and comments towards others and that is just not good for them, right? After all, how they can be so mean to others? So I'm really looking forward to 2007 and the possibility of watching my students discussing IDEAS and NOT PEOPLE! For those of you who never got involved in bullying, CONGRATULATIONS, I'm very proud of you guys! And for those of you who somehow, somewhere got involved in it, I tell you: Bullying sucks!!!!! And CONGRATULATIONS too because I am certain you are about to change, right?! I respect and LOVE all of you!!!!

"Children, after all, learn from what they see us do, rather than from what we say. When adults do not intervene, bullies may feel there is nothing wrong with their actions. Targets may feel they deserve the bullying.
Adults can intervene effectively to reduce bullying. The first step is to identify bullying. It includes:
Physical bullying: hitting, kicking, pushing, choking, punching
Verbal bullying: threatening, taunting, teasing, starting rumors, hate speech.
Exclusion from activities: This does not mean that a child should not have the right to choose to play, or not to play, with another child; it does mean that children should not be allowed to systematically exclude others: "No one play with Mary;" "No one wants to play with him;" "Don't be her friend."
Bullying is like spouse abuse or sexual harassment in that it:
Done by someone with more power or social support to someone with less power or social support
Often includes the abuser blaming the target for the abuse
Often it leads to the target blaming him or herself for the abuse.
As a culture, we are focusing new attention on childhood bullying and harassment. As we watch children being crushed by bullying, we often feel powerless. No more!There are ways to stop bullying, based on decades of research.
We sometimes see bullying as an inevitable part of childhood. Yet, according to world-wide research, 50% reductions in rates of bullying are possible. The Stop Bullying Now intervention is based on the work of many researchers in bullying prevention. "
"Where, after all, do universal human rights begin? In small places, close to home - so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any maps of the world. Yet they are the world of the individual person; the neighborhood he lives in; the school or college she attends; the factory, farm, or office where he works. Such are the places where every man, woman, and child seeks equal justice, equal opportunity, equal dignity without discrimination. Unless these rights have meaning there, they have little meaning anywhere. Without concerted citizen action to uphold them close to home, we shall look in vain for progress in the larger world."Eleanor Roosevelt"In gentleness and compassion, we tell what we know to be true."From a prayer preceding staff bullying prevention training at Holy Angels School in Delaware, August 2005. "When will our consciences grow so tender that we will act to prevent humanmisery rather than avenge it?"Eleanor Roosevelt
http://www.stopbullyingnow.com