Kids Talk About Bullying
RSSDaryl Grabarek, Curriculum Connections -- School Library Journal
Related TeachingBooks.net resources »»» When a new Deborah Ellis book is published, educators take note. Her award-winning fiction and nonfiction titles have illuminated the plight of children and teens around the world caught in the crossfire of war and pandemics. Earlier volumes by the accomplished author have included interviews with young Iraqi refugees and youth in sub-Saharan Africa whose lives have been touched by AIDS. In her latest title, We Want You to Know (Coteau Books, 2010), Ellis asked students ages 9 to 19 in communities in Southern Ontario about their experiences with bullying. The candid responses from victims and perpetrators are heartrending and eye-opening. For many the bullying was physical, for others it was verbal; all the victims suffered psychologically, as did many of their family members. The children and teens recount stories of having to leave school, situations when adults intercepted, and others when they didn't. Some of the victims attend schools where anti-bullying campaigns are in place: on one campus the program opens conversation about the subject; on another, a "zero bullying policy" just means the word "bully" is never spoken by administrators. The experience of Colton, age 10, is similar to what many of the children in the book describe. The boy who bullied him was someone he had known for years and a teacher's intervention wasn't successful: "I'd gone to school with him since kindergarten, and he'd always been fine with me until last year. That's when he started picking on almost everyone. Most of it was aimed at my friend and me. He made us feel like we never wanted to come to school again. If we made a mistake on our work and he found out about it, he'd make a big deal out of it, laughing and saying how dumb we were. He called me an idiot and said 'shut up' to me a lot, even if I wasn't talking to him. ...I told my teacher and he talked to this kid....This kid was angry all the time, like, out of control. So my teacher dealt with him but it didn't really do any good. A number of the students interviewed experienced bullying when they started a new school; others had to change schools because of the treatment they received from their peers. Katie, age 16, was homeschooled for years and looked forward to attending a public middle school when she reached grade seven. Like many of the other children in the book, she experienced both emotional and physical abuse: "I wanted so badly to make friends. That's supposed to be the fun part of school, isn't it? But the other girls wouldn't include me. They'd all known each other forever, and they didn't need me or try to get to know me. ...The whole year would have been easier if they'd just included me, but that never happened. Instead, they started actively excluding me. ...They'd hide my gym bag when it was time for gym so that I'd get into trouble with the teacher. Afterward I'd hear them laughing about it. Or they'd stop talking when I walked by them, then laugh at my back as I walked away....In the change room one time, a girl slapped me on the head-out of the blue, for no reason—then just laughed and went back to changing her clothes." In this passage Scott, 15, reflects on how being bullied turned him into a bully: "All through my life I've been bullied, and I've bullied others. It's been like the survival of the fittest. You get picked on, you see other people being picked on, and you start picking on other people, too. You see other people doing it and you don't really want to be the target. It takes some pressure off you if you put it onto someone else." He recounts one incident that later caused him regret: "I remember this one kid, Jim, in elementary school. Everyone went after him—the whole school. He smelled. His family was dirt poor....One time, I put an open fruit cup in Jim's backpack. Why did I do that? I was young and I thought it made me look like a big man in front of my peers. It worked, too. They thought I was very cool, and at the time, I felt quite good about it. I look back and think how stupid and mean it was. If I'd put myself in his shoes for a second, maybe I wouldn't have done it." Unlike Scott, some of the comments by other bullies evidence no regret. In this passage, Len, 15, a perpetrator, talks about his victims, and his school's response: "When I'd beat up kids at school, I'd warn them not to tell the teachers, and mostly they wouldn't. When they did, I'd get hauled down to the principal's office. He'd ask me what I did and why I did it.... Sometimes I'd get detention or an in-school suspension, which was a joke. I'd just go sit in the office and read. None of that stopped me. You see, now I'd have to go after the kids who told on me and hurt them more as a warning to others. I couldn't let them get away with it. I went after the kids in my class. I didn't really like them. They were loser kids—the way they dressed, the way their hair looked, the way they talked." After each excerpt the author includes a few questions for reflection and discussion, and sometimes a quotation from a child in another country, pointing out the pervasiveness of the problem. Separate lists of resources for children, parents, and teachers are included with information on government agencies, help lines, campaigns, websites, and organizations. This important book should be in every school and public library. Excerpts quoted above are reprinted from We Want You to Know: Kids Talk about Bullying, by Deborah Ellis, published by Coteau Books, Regina, Canada. Used by permission of the publisher. For other sites on bullying and violence prevention in schools, see Gail Junion-Metz's article on "Starting the School Year Positively" in the September, 2010 issue of School Library Journal. Related TeachingBooks.net resources »»»
