Bullying has became a serious issue after Phoebe Prince, a 17 years old girl, committed suicide after suffering from bullying from her classmates. Suicide rates have increased by 28.5% for the past few years. The upward trend has been found to be young people around age 14 to 19. The strong factor of this increased rate was found to be bullying. What can be done to stop bullying?



What can teachers do?

Think about it. Are teachers reliable enough to talk about your social life in person? If you were getting bullied, do you think you are going to tell the teacher? I think the counselors or teachers should make a special email address just for emails that students send in about bullying. Students can send in for help. It might be about them, what they have saw, or bullying going on with their friends. One of the reasons why kids don’t talk about these things in person are because they’re afraid that stronger kids (bullies) might find out about it. If the teachers make special email addresses, the student who told on the bullies can stay anonymous and safe.

Once the teachers get the mail, they can talk to the other teachers of the students who are related in the situation, and the students’ parents and friends to know more about what is going on. After they find out more about it, the bullys’ parents will be called in to the office and to talk to their own child in front of the teachers so the child can admit to their parents. The students who bullied can get suspended for few days until they come with a commitment saying that they will never do it again and a page long essay about how to stop bullying (like this essay). After the bullies come back from the suspension, they can be on a morning announcement and talk about what they’ve done wrong and their reflections on their thoughts over time. This will make sure that the bullies won’t bully other kids again and other kids will keep an eye on them.

What can parents do?

One reason why some kids don’t talk about getting bullied to their parents is because they know that their parents are going to contact the teachers and the parents of the bully. The kid will want to stay anonymous because he or she is afraid of what is going to happen to them if the bully finds out that he is the one who told his parents and got the bully in trouble. To make the kids more comfortable about this subject to their parents, the parents can ask the kid if anything is going on at school and that if something is going on, it is okay to tell them because their child will stay anonymous. The parents can tell the counselor about their kid’s issue with bullying and tell them to make them anonymous. If the kid hears about this, they will get comfortable to telling their parents without fear.

What can students do?

Since the bullying is going around the students in school, a group of students can make an anti-bully club. They will do things such as survey once a month about bullying going around in school and talk to individual people who wants help. The students in the club can then hang out with the people who need help from the bullies in school for a brief period of time until they become okay with the situation.

About Cyberbullying

Cyberbullying is harassing someone online by mean messages, usually anonymously. There needs to be serious consequences about this. What I think should be the consequences are: The cyberbullies must be banned from social network sites such as facebook for years (Depends on how bad they cyberbullied). The kids banned from these social network sites will make their friends think back about cyberbullying.