Celia de la Cruz Prez

Dec, 4, 2015
Final Draft

Bullying Within High Schools

Police is investigating the suicide of an 11 year old boy for an alleged

case of bullying at his school. (). He left a letter written to his parents where
he apologized and claimed he never wanted to go to school. The next day,
many teachers from his school went to the kids funeral and told his mother that
the bullying was happening during the breaks but not during the lectures.
(SANMARTN, 2015)
A 16 year old girl committed suicide Friday in Madrid. () she had
suffered bullying, as denounced by her family just a month ago. The minor, with
intellectual and physical disabilities, told her teachers that another student was
asking her for money and coercing her with messages. (LVAREZ, P., SILI,
E., & BARROSO, F., 2015)
As the two recent cases mentioned before show, bullying has always
been present in high schools from many different countries, but especially in
affluent countries. Since a very young age, like the 11 years old boy mentioned
in the first article, kids and teenagers are harassed by their classmates in a
daily basis, under the gaze of their classmates and even teachers that in most
cases, observe the situations without doing anything. In both of the articles, the
teachers were aware of the bullying situation but no one of them reported or

took action to stop the situation. As a consequence of that passiveness, both

teens decided to commit suicide as the only solution to their problems. On the
other hand, nowadays, kids are bullied for reasons such as not wearing trendy
clothes, having different hobbies, being from a different culture, and many other
superficial reasons that could be avoided with a better education in values. In
addition, since the introduction of smartphones and social media, the number of
bullying cases have increased dramatically. Due to this fact, the term
cyberbullying has been created. Cyberbullying is the use of social media to
threaten and humiliate someone. As statistics show, Over 25 percent of
adolescents and teens have been bullied repeatedly through their cell phones
or the Internet, (Richard Webster, 2009) but teachers express feeling
powerless about cyberbullying because they cant control what their students do
with their phones and laptops either at home and during school time. These
data shows that the educational system is not working against bullying as well
as it should be. Twenty-five percent of teenagers being bullied clearly shows
that values and respect are not being taught and that schools are not doing
enough to stop bullying between their students. This is mainly because high
school teachers are not sufficiently trained on how to affront a case of bullying,
which is something that most of high school students agree with. As the
webpage shows, more than 67% of high school students say that schools dont
know how to act towards a case of bullying, and that in most cases, the
intervention of teachers is very ineffective.
High School teachers are the first ones that need to know what bullying is
and what protocol they need to follow when a case of bullying is observed. That
is because teachers are the ones that spend more time inside a classroom with

the students, therefore they are the first ones that can detect bullying and
intervene. Teachers can and need to be able to detect cases of bullying during
the first stages in order to prevent dramatic consequences like not just suicide,
but depression, physical violence, etc. However, in some cases teachers think
that those behaviors are part of teenagers relationships. Teachers believe that
teenagers are more like rebels and that it is normal to tease other classmates
calling them names, laughing at them when they talk in front of the class, etc.
Because of that reason, most of the teachers dont notice bullying situations,
therefore, they cant intervene before the situation gets aggravated. Moreover,
teachers that identify a case of bullying between their students are afraid to
intervene because they dont know how to do it or dont have the support of the
high schools director. According to Michael J. Boulton, Doctor in Educational
Psychology, Teachers, regardless of length of service, were not confident in
their ability to deal with bullying and 87 per cent wanted more training.
(Boulton, 2011) The majority of teachers dont know how to react against
bullying because they are afraid of aggravating the situation or even to get
harmed by the bully due to their lack of training on this topic. Lastly, teachers
dont know that there are different courses, workshops, etc. designed to help
them during bullying situations because the school dont provide those trainings.
Teachers play a critical role in identifying, addressing, reporting and intervening
in bullying behavior in their classrooms, David Esquith, director of the Office of
Safe and Healthy Students said. These modules will certainly help those
teachers who dont know what to do when these situations arise, and will
strengthen the skills of those who do.(U.S. Department of Education, 2012) D.
Esquith explains how teachers are extremely important to stop a case of

bullying because as we said before, because they are inside the classroom with
the students, and they are the first ones that can stop the bullying situation
before it is too late. D. Esquith also offers some modules that will teach
teachers what to do when they have a case of bullying in their classrooms.
There are different curses and techniques that schools can facilitate to teachers
to properly train them to recognize bullying and to act against it, the problem is
that in most of the countries there are not established rules against bullying that
schools need to follow. Fortunately, Several anti-bullying interventions have
been developed and all schools in Sweden are required by law to have an antibullying plan. (Frisen, Jonsson, & Persson, 2007). This is an example of how
slowly yet effectively, some countries are starting to take bullying more
seriously. Sweden should be an example to look at because having an antibullying plan to follow for high school teachers and directors is key to
successfully stop bullying. Nonetheless, it is important for high schools to
develop their own anti-bullying intervention plan carefully and in detail,
depending on the laws of the city, the type of bullying situation, and many other
details.

In most cases, bullying will stop with just the proper intervention from the
teachers and schools director and the follow up of the high schools ant bullying
laws, but some other times further actions will need to be taken if bullying
couldnt be stopped within the high school. If the harassment continues,
disciplinary resolution steps proceed to the next level in the following order
depending on the seriousness of the harassment:
* Issuance of detention and referral to the counselor

* Assignment to mediation
* Referral to anger management
* Assignment to the Saturday Alternative program
* Suspension from school
* Transfer to the Alternative School
* Expulsion
* Filing legal charges
In many cases, the best solution will be the use of therapy, but I some other
cases a step further will need to be taking. The problem is that reporting the
harassment can be counterproductive. It may solve the problem at school but
make it worse in the community. In situations like this, the school can work with
the student and parents in pursuing legal action through the local law
enforcement agency. (Campbell, Wallace D., 2000) High school teachers need
to be able to recognize when a case of bullying needs a more complex solution,
Teachers and high school directors should not hesitate to take further and even
legal actions to stop bullying. In some circumstances, expulsing a student or
taking legal actions against a bullying situation might damage the reputation of
the high school temporally, however, the well-being and safety of its students
must be the most important.
In conclusion, the cases of bullying in high schools are increasing
dramatically mainly due to the lack of teachers training and knowledge on how
to act against bullying. The role of high school teachers is vital to prevent new
causes of bullying and to stop the current ones. Because of that, high school
teachers should be provided with more training about bullying as well as with
more laws that protect students rights and well-being. Also primordial is having

a detailed plan of how high school teachers and director should act when a
case of bullying is detected, starting from the most basic mediation to the
knowing when to start legal actions.

Works Cited

Richard Webster Cyber bullying statistics

http://www.bullyingstatistics.org/, Web.
SANMARTN, O. Investigan si hubo acoso en el suicidio de un

nio de 11 aos, from http://www.elmundo.es/, Web.

LVAREZ, P., SILI, E., & BARROSO, F. Una adolescente
discapacitada se suicida tras sufrir acoso escolar. from
http://www.elmundo.es/, Web.

U.S. Department of Education U.S. Department of Education

Provides Guidance to Help Classroom Teachers Combat Bullying
http://www.ed.gov/news, Web.

Boulton, Michael. "Teachers' Views on Bullying: Definitions,

Attitudes and Ability to Cope." British Journal of Educational Psychology.

Wiley Online Library. Web.

Wallace D., Campbell. "Techniques for Dealing with Student
Harrassment {i.e. Harassment} at the High School Level." American

Secondary Education El Mundo. Http://eds.a.ebscohost.com/. Web.

Frisen, Ann, Anna-karin Jonsson, and Camilla Persson.
"ADOLESCENTS' PERCEPTION OF BULLYING." WHO IS THE
VICTIM? WHO IS THE BULLY? WHAT CAN BE DONE TO STOP
BULLYING? Web.
"11 Facts About Bullying." Do Something.

https://www.dosomething.org/. Web
Cohn-Vargas, Becki. "5 Ways to Stop Bullying and Move into

Action."Edutopia. http://www.edutopia.org/, Web.