Did you know? According to the National Education Association, it is estimated that 160,000 children miss school every day due to fear of attack or intimidation by other students. Did you know? American schools harbor approximately 2.1 million bullies and 2.7 million of their victims. Did you know? 1 in 7 Students in Grades K-12 is either a bully or a victim of bullying. Did you know? 56% of students have personally witnessed some type of bullying at school. Did you know? According to bullying statistics, 1 out of every 10 students who drops out of school does so because of repeated bullying. Did you know…. It is very important that we speak about bullying today, now, because it happens every day. Whether we see it, or we do it. Bullying is everywhere. There are four types of bullying: Physical, Verbal, Indirect, and Cyber. Bullying does not only affect someone physically, but also, and most importantly, mentally. I want to reemphasize what I said earlier: Bullying is everywhere! You could get bullied because of your race, gender, religion, sexual preference, ethnicity, physical appearance, etc. I want to share a personal experience with you today. I have only shared this experience with a few people since it happened: I was the summer of 2006. I was just getting ready to start 6th grade. Since my parents were divorced, I would spend my summers with my mom and her family. At first, my mom’s uncles were very nice to us. Well, that was until one of them started to tell me things. He would make sexual remarks towards me. The moment he saw me, he would just start telling me things about how I looked and what he wanted to do to me. But, I just kept quiet. I didn’t know what my silence could do, until, my second oldest sister told me that the same thing had happened to her. At that moment, I felt terrible. I didn’t know that my silence could cause this. When most people think of bullying, they think of physical bullying. However, bullying goes beyond the physical and can encompass the verbal, indirect, and cyber forms too. It is time for us to change our school, our community, our world. Whether we are the bullies or the victims. We have to stop this and speak up. Stop bullying now!