The following material is from pages 8-11 of the Bullying in Schools book. You may use that book or this condensed version from those pages. Please review the following material with class and then have the class, as a whole, answer the questions at the end. Put the answers on the board so that students may see how big the problem is. Please discuss each item as a class to facilitate a discussion about bullying. If you don’t get through all, that is fine. An overall discussion which raises awareness is what the goal is for this lesson.
Bullying is not a new problem. On any given school day approximately 160,000 kids decide to skip school to avoid being picked on by their peers at school. A much larger number suffer torment in silence. Research tells us that bullying is most common in grades 6-10, but it can happen at nearly every age and among both males and females. Most bullying involves several kinds of behavior.
1. Physical Bullying is the most common among boys. Pushing, tripping, hitting, and here at Sunset, locker spinning, are the best known examples of this type of behavior.
2. Among girls, Relational Bullying is the most dominant form of bullying. This is the use of peer pressure and manipulation to isolate a target and hurt their feelings. This kind of bully may try to convince an entire group of people to ignore, exclude, or avoid a particular student.
3. The most common form of bullying is Verbal Bullying. Here, bullies tease, mock, threaten, and taunt their peers. This includes spreading rumors, gossip and outright lies about another person. These false stories are then passed by word of mouth or through e-mail, text messages, and other internet based forms of communication. These stories usually focus on another person’s appearance, race, religion, family, or economic status. Insults may also focus on a target’s sexuality or sexual history. Again, this is most common with girls. This form of bullying usually involves a large audience and is difficult for the target to counteract.
4. Some forms of bullying involve Criminal Behavior. Most states, including Utah
Take a minute to survey the class for answers the following questions:
1. How many actual bullies do you know of at your school right now?
a. None
b. 1-5
c. More than 5
2. How many targets of bullies do you know of right now?
a. None
b. 1-5
c. More than 5
3. Where at Sunset does most bullying happen?
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