Keeping Schools Safe from Cyber Bullying [ITL 530]The artifact presented for ITL 530 is a combination of an essay, a Power Point presentation, and a poster. All three parts are meant to address the growing issue of Cyberbullying.The following paper, poster and accompanying power point presentation addresses a subject that has increasingly become a safety issue at schools. That issue is cyber bullying. Cyber bullying has become increasingly prevalent in schools. Some studies, like the 2017 School Crime Supplement and the 2017 Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System, estimate 15% of students are the victims of online bullying. Meanwhile, other websites, like bullying statistics.org, estimate anywhere between 43 and half of all students are victims (Cyber Bullying Statistics, 2019). And since only one tenth of students report cyber bullying when it happens, that actual number might be much higher.
The essay and the Power Point work together to highlight six basic concerns divided into two parts. Those two parts include knowing what cyber bullying is and then knowing what to do about it. The Power Point uses intermission slides to subtly insert surprising facts meant to keep the student or teacher watching the presentation engaged.In the most engaging manner possible, the accompanying Power Point is meant to teach educators how they can create a safe and healthy school environment. In order to accomplish this, educators need to understand what cyber bullying is, how deep the problem runs, and what forms cyber bullying can take. Once educators understand these things, they can start asking how do I prevent it from entering my class, how do I talk to parents about it when their student is being bullied, and what resources can I turn to if things somehow manage to get worse.
The page/site is clearly organized and contains content that creatively welcomes the audience to the Showcase and introduces the artifacts/assignments using multimodal forms of communication. First off, this presentation uses several media to communicate its point. It uses Power Points, pictures, quotes, surprising facts, an overlaying poster and an accompanying essay.
So, what is cyber bullying? In a school setting, cyber bullying is posting, sharing, or sending negative, harmful, false, or mean things about another student (“What is Cyber bullying”, 2019). The bully might share personal information. In many ways cyber bullying presents unique challenges, traditional bullying does not. First off, the mean and false content may not be posted during class time. This can make it difficult for educators to control. Moreover, while traditional bullying tended to be a matter of strong students picking on the weak, cyber bullying doesn’t require any physical strength to inflict (How to beat Cyber Bullies, 2013).
This
presentation would be of value to many audiences. It has practical information
for teachers trying to set up a safe class, and it contains a wealth of
information valuable to both school safety and administration. Finally, it
contains information that would be compelling and useful to students dealing
with cyber bullying in an immediate setting like resources for further help and a
better understanding of why cyber bullies lash out.
Currently, cyber bullying is a serious problem. When educators go beyond the basic statistics and learn that between twenty and fifty percent of young students are victims, there are quite a few more frightening statistics. One the one that stands out the most is about 90% of students who witness cyberbullying ignore it. Combine that statistic with the fact that 75% of students have visited websites created for the sole purpose of bashing other students. If those two facts are combined with the realization that only one in ten students tell an adult about their abuse and the fact that each victim is two to nine times more likely to commit suicide, it becomes clear there is a very deep problem (11 Facts About Cyberbullying, 2019).
The artifact has connections to TPEs 2.1, 2.3, and 2.6. TPE 2.1 requires teachers to promote students' social-emotional growth, development, and individual responsibility using positive interventions and supports, restorative justice, and conflict resolution. All of these concepts can be found in dealing effectively with cyber bullying. TPE 2.3 requires teachers to establish learning environments that are emotionally healthy and safe. In order to do this the instructor must address issues of intolerance and harassment among students, such as bullying, racism, and sexism. TPE 2.6 requires establishing clear expectations for positive classroom behavior and for student-to-student and student-to-teacher interaction. Needless to say, by definition, this excludes bullying or cyber bullying.The TPE elements I chose include TPE 2.1, 2.3, and 2.6. They run the gamut from creating a positive environment, to promoting social emotional development, to directly addressing intolerance. Each concept is either touched on by this presentation or dealt with directly. Its creation has resulted in significant growth of my teaching practices. In the district where I sub, bullying and attitudes that disrupt social emotional growth are commonplace. Having any type of toolkit to deal with that, is a huge head start.
Based on this my continued growth plan includes the following two steps:
- I must competently handle issues like sexism, bullying, and intolerance in order to create a positive learning environment that fosters the kind of student trust that will make students effective collaborators in their own education.
- I must guard against my own tendency to be sarcastically biting. While it's a defense mechanism meant to be playful, I must remember humor is almost always at someone's expense. If I am truly eliminating bullying from the classroom, it should never be at the expense of the students I teach.
First and foremost, there are four major steps to eliminating cyber bullying. The first step is that all educators need to be ready to teach a new concept in their classroom. This concept, called Digital Citizenship, is new. What is Digital Citizenship? In its formal definition, Digital Citizenship, is the quality of a person’s membership in a digital community. Examples of Digital Citizenship include communicating respectfully online, respecting other’s privacy, and supporting others by offering useful feedback that encourages them (Heick, 2018). More importantly, teaching this concept is now part of California’s adopted Teaching Performance Expectations. Teachers are expected to model and develop digital literacy by using technology to engage students and support their learning and promote digital citizenship (Ctc, 2018). Beyond this, teachers should learn how to empower student leaders. And when they learn cyberbullying is taking place, educators should report it and connect with parents (Muir, 2019).
Based on this artifact, my continued growth plan would involve giving the students a safe learning environment for their social emotional growth that effectively deals the challenges to that environment like bullying, sexism, and racism. Secondly, I would give the students a part in defining the positive classroom environment that sets the stage for a safe learning environment.At that point, the teacher will want to start with some easy interventions. These may include separating the bully from the bullied. These interventions will likely involve teaching the students who are getting bullied about privacy settings, blocking, and how to avoid giving the bullies what they want most, a reaction (How to Beat Cyberbullies, 2013). That said, the victim should be taught to report the harassment to the internet service provider or website where it occurs, as there’s a strong chance it’s against the site or the ISP’s terms of service. It’s also helpful to understand that most bullies are engaged only for their own entertainment. In other words, they have issues and those issues have very little to do with the person being bullied.
Just in case those are not enough tips and resources for educators, there are tons of resources online about the topic of cyber bullying. Many of those resources can be found on Safe Kids dot Org. While the main purpose of Safe Kids dot Org is to protect kids from unintended injuries, it also has a wealth of resources and links related to cyber bullying. Some of those resources include Stop Bullying dot Gov, the American Psychological Association, and the Cyber bullying Research Center (Bullying and Cyber bullying Resources, 2019). And, educators also shouldn’t forget to also collaborate with other teachers and administrators, they are in many cases, the best resources teachers will have.
This presentation was created to be gripping. Slide thirteen shows many victims of cyber bullying who took their own lives. The list starts at 14 pt and each name gets progressively smaller until they disappear off the page. An eye stairs at the list shedding a tear. What gripped me about writing this list, was every time I looked for names I came upon a completely new list. This is one of the events that inspired me to make the presentation so personal. If the list included every victim, it would literally scroll off the slide, even at a one point font. And hopefully, that attention to detail will inspire my pk12 learners to take a long hard look at how they treat each other.
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