Cyberbullying

Cyberbullying is defined as verbal harassment and threats that occur during online activities. These online activities can include: instant messaging, emailing, social networking such as facebook or myspace, text messages, or chat rooms. I remember when I was in middle school and AOL instant messenger was the high tech way of communicating. When I would get online and talk to someone that I didn’t know I always asked ‘a/s/l?’ meaning age, sex, live. This way I knew who I was talking to or at least thought that I knew who I was talking to. Sometimes it would just be meeting cool people from other cities and states, and sometimes people were much older than me and talked inappropriately. With those people I would just stop talking to them and block them. I believe that’s the only experience that I have had online that kind of led to inappropriateness which I didn’t cause.

The law about cyberbullying is tough. On page 61 of Taylor’s article it says “under the standard articulated by the High Court in Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier (1988), a school may restrict student speech that is at odds with the school's educational objectives. But schools generally may not restrict student speech merely because they disagree with it or find it to be offensive.” Because of this standard right here it makes it hard schools to take control of the cyberbullying issue.

It’s hard to know when students are being cyberbullied at school unless they have evidence and report it to a teacher or a counselor. There are some signs however that a student may be being bullied including “ the student being visibly upset after internet or cell phone use, noticeable withdrawal from friends and activities, academic performance drops, student develops a pattern or absenteeism or tardiness, and the student is a target of traditional bullying” (Norrander). When Cyberbullying happens off-site there really isn’t anything that teachers or administrators can do because of the constitutional amendment of free speech.

If cyberbullying were to happen in my classroom I would hope that the student being bullied would report the bullying student. I would make sure that the bullied student does not feel threatened in my classroom and I would do what I could working with their counselor to make sure that the bullying stops in school for this student altogether.