Cyberbullying

Cyberbullying is harassment or threats that occur during online activity or via cell phones. The avenues to use cyberbullying include email, cell phones, chat rooms, blogs, instant messaging, and networking sites. It is anything that damages a person, their reputation, their life, or their computer system. Because bullying no longer requires face-to-face interactions, kids no longer feel safe in their own homes. I have been fortunate enough to be free from any experiences involving cyberbullying. In fact, I can't even think of one person in my life that has been cyberbullied.

The problem that schools face with cyberbullying, is that most of it occurs at home which limits what schools can do to prevent it, even though the effects of the bullying are brought into the classroom. In May of 2007 the Oregon Legislature added cyberbullying to the House Bill 2637, which allowed school to treat cyberbullying as harrassment and intimidation. However, schools are now stuck only reacting to the specific incidences where cyberbullying occurs inside the school or when it effects the school as a whole if done off-campus.
Here are some signs that a teacher might see that could show signs of cyberbullying: the student is visibly upset after intenet or cell phone use, the student withdraws from friends and activiites, their academic performance drops, if the student is already a target for traditional bullying, or if the student develops habits of being absent or tardy.
Knowing that the above list shows the effects of cyberbullying on the classroom, I believe schools should have the ability to regulate off-site bullying. I am not recommending that they put in extra time or effort into monitory all, or any, of their students home activity on the internet. All I propose is that when an off campus cyberbullying incident is brought to the attention of the school, the school should be able to discipline their student for it. Obviously if the bullying causes threat of physical harm, the school should involve law enforcement, but other than that, the school should enforce informal discipline.

In my classroom I will first empower students to solve the issue themselves by encouraging them to tell someone (parent, or other adult). Beyond that, I will have both preemptive and reactionary guidelines. I will have a list of things that I will talk about with my classroom (ie, don't post things somebody else can hold against you, don't hang out with people that hurt you physically or emotionally...). Additionally, I will clearly define what cyberbullying is and explain what the specific disciplines will be for the different types of cyberbullying. I will also explicitly explain how we will go about investigating the process. I will even warn them that there will be informal disciplinary actions taken for off-campus bullying as well (ie, getting parents involved by showing them posts). I will deal only with my classroom, or at least that is my current plan. Maybe down the road sometime I will be on a committee that figures out how to address the entire school on this issue. I know cyberbullying is becoming more and more prominent, but I do not see it being a huge deal in my classroom. I trust that the plan I have set up will take care of the problem nicely.