SYAH project

See You At Harry’s Project

Bullying- Natalie Meller

“Each school is committed to a safe and respectful educational environment for all students, employees, volunteers and patrons free from harassment, intimidation, or bullying.” RCW (Revised Code of Washington) 9A.36.080(3). Bullying can come in many forms: Physical, Verbal, Social, Psychological, Electronic or Cyber, Racial, Religious, Sexual and Disabilities.

A bully is a person that uses a certain power he has, to embarrass, humiliate, threaten, or cause some form of harm to another student. Every student has the right to feel safe coming to school. This right is taken by the student when someone bullies him. Our school encourages students to speak up and come to the principal or the counselor and talk about it.

At WBAIS there are strategies in place to prevent bullying and address bullying when it occurs. Mr. Waldman our Middle school principal says, that each story has two sides, “My job is first to see both sides of the story, and then act, there is a reason for everything”. The school will use different strategies for each case. In order to get to the story they will try to get to the source of the problem.

After doing all of this, the school will include the parents, speak to the students about the consequences and will probably punish the students that took part in it with suspension or even expulsion (they didn’t expel anyone yet).

In my opinion our school takes bullying very seriously. They will want to educate us, the students, so that the bullying will not occur but also punish the students that bully. I think that they will prefer to teach us not to bully before punishing us for doing that. It is more important to learn from mistakes that other did, or yourself, than getting punished for mistakes that you didn’t know were mistakes!

In order to address the many issues that bullying represent, the principal, teachers, counselor, students and parents all have a role. First make the students understand what bullying means. Then have certain rules that every student is aware of. The students should know how to behave when they can see bullying occurs and especially when they are a part of it.

Unfortunately, bullying happens all the time, the consequences to this behavior can end really bad or make the victim stronger. In either way bullying should not be tolerated. Those that bully should be the ones ashamed they spend so much time on making someone else miserable and can’t see that it is makes them miserable too. Over 3.2 million students are victims of bullying each year and approximately 160,000 teens skip school every day because of bullying in the US. In order to stop bullying all over the world, we all must be active, as Theodore Roosevelt once said “Knowing what is right does not mean much unless you do what is right”.