Bullying the Cyber Way

Cyberbullying is not something that has always been a part of my vernacular. After reading the assigned articles for this post, my roommate, Cheri, came into the room and we began discussing cyberbullying and how it was not a notion we ever even considered. To our generation, the novelty of text messaging and chatting online was just that - a novelty. We never thought of using those outlets as a means for harming another person. Perhaps that is because we were never malicious to begin with, but I believe it was more that our generation was just excited about all of these new venues of communication.

Cyberbullying, at it's core, is bullying another group or person by the use of cell phones and Internet, namely, blogs and social media websites. As if bullies weren't cowards enough, now they get to hide behind avatars and fake identities. Schools are in an especially difficult situation; it's hard enough to prove physical bullying and now they have to not only prove who the person is behind cyberbullying, but they are not able to do anything about it unless it essentially causes the school to internally malfunction and erupt. Because of free speech and the students' rights to it, the school can do very little if the bullying only affects a single person and does not disrupt others at the school. Doesn't seem very fair, does it? So pretty much, someone out there determined that the functionality of the school as a exponentially more important than that of an individual student. This is about where I cock my head to the side and ask, "What?!" and also where I start to think about what I, as a teacher, can do.

Since the only way cyberbullying can really be disciplined by school officials is if the bullying took place at school, it is up to the teachers and other staff to pay extra attention to the attitudes of their students. Just as we area already trained to do, we should keep a look out for changes in behavior and peer relationships, as well as on-site bullying. Most likely if there is a face-to-face altercation, it will end up online in some form. If a teacher notices anything, I believe that the best step to take would be to talk to the student who is being bullied and go from there.

As a high school teacher, my students will already have ingrained online etiquette that I will be hard pressed to change - as most things, the rights and wrongs of Internet usage will take place when they are younger. However, this shouldn't stop me from letting them know how they should and shouldn't act if an issue were to come up. With the growth of the "www" world, tools on the Internet will become the standard in the classroom - as this class is confirming. My approach to my students should be preemptive and reactive. For example, if my students use a class blog to submit assignments, as we are now, there would be rules about what kind of content is allowed in both the posts and comments - any deviation to those rules would have consequences. Hopefully my school will also have similar rules and they will back me up if I ever have to discipline a student for acting inappropriately. But, this rises another question: Let's say I assign my students a blog entry on the day's reading and they each also have to comment on two other student blogs - keep in mind that this is homework, done at home, not at school. What if a student's comment is derogatory and harmful? Am I able to punish them even though the cyberbullying took place at home? Does it matter that it was done on a class blog or not? Where do we draw the line?

While the schools cannot do much if the daily activities at the school are not being interrupted, I think that they should be able to. What kind of example are we setting if we tell our students that we care about their lives and that we're there for them, but then we turn our backs when something happens outside of class that greatly affects their personal class experience? A 15-year-old is not going to come to school if the night before someone sent out a malicious blast on Facebook about them. I suppose for now, though, "when incidents of cyberbullying or other harassment rise to the level of a true threat (e.g., the speech involved shows a genuine intent to inflict harm), school leaders have a duty to take some action and should look to law enforcement officials for help" (Cyberbullying: Is There Anything Schools Can Do? 2008). But what if waiting to determine if the speech would inflict real harm is too late?