Portfolio Evaluation Standard - Community (Module 5 - How Can Teachers Prevent Cyber Bullying?)

Triggering Event

How can we help students understand safety, cultural, and privacy issues related to technology and practice legal and ethical behavior?

My Trigger Event Question based on Reading

What can teachers do to prevent cyber bullying and/or digital harassment?

Article Connection/Explanation to Standard and Trigger Question

This standard (students recognize the rights, responsibilities and opportunities of living, learning and working in an interconnected digital world, and they act and model in ways that are safe, legal and ethical) could not have come at a more perfect time as I am currently teaching the bullying unit in health.  In the bullying sequence, we talk about cyber bullying such as what it is, how to identify it, how to handle it and a review general digital citizenship (the whole first day of school is spent on digital citizenship).  However, for this module, my trigger question is what can teachers do to prevent cyber bullying and/or digital harassment. 

            The first article I read from stopbullying.gov gave pointers targeted more towards students and their parents but some could be applied to teachers such as being aware of what students are doing online and establishing rules around technology use.  I think these are both standard and teachers are currently doing this, however it is impossible to be monitoring 32 screens at once.  The second article from educationworld.com suggests discussing bullying, teaching corporation and creating a bully action plan for prevention. 

Figure 1

            Most articles out there state the same thing about cyber bullying prevention and yet bullying still occurs.  I think the key to bullying prevention is changing the culture of the school by spreading kindness and teaching how to stand up to intolerance.  Students are trying to find themselves and fit in.  With snap chat, facebook and instagram there are many opportunities for students to break each other down when they should be building each other up.  Changing the culture to create kindness instead of hate is the key.  A resource I highly suggest for all teachers is randomactsofkindness.org.  There are ideas to spread acts of kindness around school and even fun calendars for each month with daily random acts.  Figure 1 is an example from edutopia.org of a kindness game poster, something I had my students create. 

            Overall, I think the answer to my trigger question is educating students on cyber bullying/digital harassment.  Bringing awareness to the situation and teaching kids techniques to handle these situations are key.  Also, helping students know to report it to you and be an honest resource.  I have done enough bully education to know that students do not trust that teachers will do anything when they report bullying, so the most important things teachers can do is act when they know something is happening or when a student speaks up.

Resources

A. (2012, March 08). Prevent Cyberbullying. Retrieved March 8,

2017, from https://www.stopbullying.gov/cyberbullying/prevention/index.html

Bullying and Cyberbullying: Six Things Teachers Can Do.

(n.d.). Retrieved March 6, 2017, from http://www.educationworld.com/a_curr/what-schools-can-do-to-stop-bullying.shtml

Random Acts of Kindness. (n.d.). Retrieved March 9, 2017,

from https://www.randomactsofkindness.org/

What is digital harassment? (n.d.). Retrieved March 04, 2017, from

https://www.commonsensemedia.org/cyberbullying/what-is-digital-harassment