Cabrillo

Bullying is the word that will bring most people to tears or bring them back to bad or painful memories when you speak to some adults or teens about their past in school. They may be a bit nervous to speak about it. Parents and Teachers say that they can stop bullying. I believe that this would be a bit difficult project for adults, everyone has to have a part in this and no one will be left behind.

During my time in Elementary school and middle school years, I never had the experience in being bullied or being the bully. This doesn’t mean that I never saw someone being bullied. In elementary I was mainly the loner and almost no one knew me. Not many people noticed me until someone introduced herself to me and I was pulled out of that darkness. I did not see any one get bullied though almost every time I went to the office to get something or to drop something off I saw at least one kid sitting there with a scowl on his or her face or a face full of fear on wondering in what’s going to happen. I had always wondered in what they were in trouble for but I never asked them because it was their privacy. Middle school was a different story. Even though you may have never saw the bullying or fight, you would hear it from a friend. The story of the fight or bullying would spread like a wild fire and continue to go until everyone knows about what had happened.

During all of the time at Elementary and Middle school I had never been bullied nor done anything to prevent it. Whenever someone was bullied I was never there to see it close up and personal. I had told myself that if there was someone who was being bullied. I would go over and help them even if it means that I got hurt in the process. Even though I had told myself this no one around me had been bullied. So, I don’t know the feeling of being bullied or helping someone being bullied. It has never happened to me so I guess that I wouldn’t know how it feels.

The teachers did have and assemble to speak of this idea. I believe that I was in 8th grade when they introduced this assemble to us. This assemble was inspirational to me and I wanted to help anyone that was being bullied. A man came to speak to us during this assemble and the first thing that he said was “sticks and stone may break your bone but words can //__never__// hurt you”. This is a lie he had told us sticks and stone can break our bones but words hurt the most. During the assemble he had shown videos of teenagers from middle school and elementary school. They all show3d me that even though you don’t see the bullying they do happen and it is hurting the people around you. “Everyone around you may be wearing a plastic smile in order to show the hurt that they feel”. He had told us this at the middle of the assemble and the end of the assemble.

The nature of young people cannot be determined by race, ethnicity, or gender. I believe that the nature of young people comes from the nature of the family. The family has a lot of influence on the children but sometimes they can be just born with a mean nature and it is natural to them. They could have had a bad experience from the past or they just have it in them. They could just like the felling of being superior. Children can be mean or even cruel to the weak. They pick on the ones that are weaker or different because it shows them that they are on a different league than they are. They want to say that they are stronger and they will do whatever it takes to stay at the top. This will continue to go on until no child feel inferior. Sometimes children will just do this so that they can pass the time in a boring school zone. Adults say that they can change this. They say they will protect those who can’t protect themselves, but can they back it up, can they really change anything. They can have a guest speaker and teachers talk to the kids but what will they do after that? Do they really think that everything will fall into place after that? Children and young teenagers don’t work that way. They hear it all but they won’t do it if there is no influence or something to back up the words. If you put them in a smaller school with less kids to pick on and there is more work and the school is more exciting. Then they might stop teasing and bullying. Kids are unpredictable they can be as unpredictable as a horse. You don’t know what they will do next.

Everyone says this and that about the kids of middle school and how they are animals and cannot be controlled as easily as elementary kids. They cannot be controlled but they can be influenced a little to stop some crimes that they have committed. A child will do as they think that they please and what they think what is right. You need to guide them through life but leave room for them so that they can see their own path.

Middle School life can be tough, knowing that you can be bombed on at any moment by someone, having the fear of people whispering behind your back as you walk down the halls, girls calling each other names everywhere you turned, getting made fun of because of how you look or because of your “sexuality“, it’s horrible; To the point where people often can commit suicide, as young as the age of ten years old. How many more young adults have to take their life before people start to realize that bullying is a serious problem? I’ve experienced this fear and witnessed it. Not even in middle school, but in elementary school. Yeah, it starts that young. I used to be best friends with these two girls. One was an African American who would get called really mean names because of the color of her skin. She also got called “four eyes” and “fat”, fortunately it wasn’t to her face, but she knew something was going on. When she wasn’t in the class, I’d talk to my “other friends” who would somehow bring her up into a conversation and find SOME kind of way to make fun of her, and scrawny little nerd me, I laugh along, because they were the “cool kids”. It hurt to laugh but I didn’t know what was going on. I guess I was just another little “un-cool” kid wanting to be labeled as “cool”. I presume I was being a bully by not telling my best friend or telling the administration or anything. Thinking about it now still hurts. I guess karma came back at me a little, because the “cool” kids didn’t talk to me after I stopped joining in on the so-called fun of making fun of my best friend. Being in middle school, you also see tons of fights, but no one ever tells the administrators, you’re just another kid trying to get through the day, not getting beat up or sticking up for anyone. You join in the chanting and all the kids saying “FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT!” It was terrible. I once witnessed this girl who was sitting in the field eating her lunch, pleasantly, when all of a sudden, this group starts crowding around the field, so of course, my friends and I go over there, and what do you know? This girl is being called out by another girl, they were almost about to fight, but a teacher broke it up. I guess you had to witness the intensity of this fight and the look in one girl’s eyes was a look of hatred, while the look in the other girl’s eyes was fear. Fear of being beaten up, fear of being embarrassed, fear of being made fun of. Just pure fear. It was quite sad actually. Another one I encountered was also in elementary school. I guess this kid had like seizures very frequently or something like that, and I guess this one teacher would laugh at him? I’m not sure of the whole story, but I know it went something like that. No one ever bothered to tell anyone what happened, even though many people, including myself, knew about it. I was among the many people who were like “awe” and felt bad, but we were just bystanders in the situation. I’m pretty sure the kid was probably mentally scarred, if not hurt by the fact that that could happen.

The middle school I went too talked about bullying and said it was bad, but they never really addressed the problem. Yeah, we had assemblies and talked about it ‘once in a while’ but they didn’t really try to prevent the fights, they just said “If you have a problem or get in fight, tell us immediately” which didn’t really help, because then you would probably be labeled as a “rat” which is never good. My elementary school on the other hand addressed it a little better. We had yard duties with bright orange vests and walkie talkies who monitored the field at all times, but they also said “Come to us if you have a problem” which isn’t very helpful. I think schools should have more awareness. Show videos, talk about stories of kids getting bullied, like the two recent ones Tyler Clementi and Larry King (even though Larry King‘s story wasn‘t that simple), both homosexual, both killing themselves. Schools should have guest speakers, and maybe talk about it more frequently.

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Bullying I saw a lot of it and did some of it, also was greatly affected by it. Many of my friends were bullied often by friends and people they didn’t know; one of my friends was overweight. He was insulted by his friends by random people, and probably one of the worst people was me, I did it because I was often insulted by other people, because I acted pretty weird and was just different. I also saw a loner kid, who people messed with because he had some problems, people always insulted him and messed with him, but I never thought about helping him, because I didn’t want to never really crossed my mind. I was bullied a lot, 5th grade to 7th grade, I didn’t have a lot of friends I was really weird and my parents’ divorce was still affecting me. In 5th grade I was at a private school, It was a small class, I acted weird as it was and I made a change to my diet, I stopped eating sugary stuff and candy, and I told people about it, now just because I was different people decided that’s why I should belong with them, the school at my school Sacred Heart was kinda corrupt kids who had parents in the faculty, got special treatment, and bullying had few attempts to stop or even try to slow it down. At my middle school, Cabrillo, I wasn’t used to public school life, my old best friend saved me there from tons of bullying, but thankfully being a larger school I was more ignored then at my private school with a class of 30 instead of a class of 300 at Cabrillo, even though the school was larger bullying still affected me because private school somewhat sheltered us from kindergarten to 8th grade, but I got through it better than some other students from being conserved and not really talking that much. Then High school at foothill is good and bullying doesn’t really affect me much anymore. The School at Sacred Heart didn’t do much to stop bullying, it was easy to avoid getting in trouble by throwing insults around, and saying rumors, in a class of 30 it got around, but the school didn’t do much and they demanded complete respect of the adults, detention was given for even the most basic of consequences, I got a week for throwing a rubber ball at a girl, the school was unforgiving and overdid consequences, the school was also a bit corrupt the kids who had parents who supported the school or were teachers get extra benefits, which was unfair. Cabrillo tried to help but the kids didn’t cooperate with the school, because it punished us, how was it supposed to help us? It had meetings and stuff but they didn’t really do anything, It tried to help but even when it did it usually failed at it. Why children are mean to the weak? Children are human beings, humans are corrupt and power hungry, they want to be dominant, the weak are the easiest to pick on, to attack, the strong may be targeted but not nearly as much. I believe that kids aren’t going to change enough to stop this major bullying across the United States, kids lack respect for each other. The natural instinct is to get rid of the weak, which may have stayed with kids to pick on the kids survival of the fittest, kids are immature little assholes that are selfish, and I know I was one of them. I regret a lot of the things I did when I was younger but we can never take them back, all we can do is try to make sure the next generation doesn’t do the same. Adults want to make life in school comfortable learning enviourment and fun, but they usually don’t succeed at it, they try to make it better, but I doubt the school can make it much better, the parents can teach the kids, and help them learn how to deal with it but it is mostly up to the kid, this problem I think can never truly stop this problem. Adults will try and try again but I doubt they will ever be satisfied. I think the best thing to do is to make sure that this problem won’t get any worse, if adults can succeed in that it will be something, unless a school is dedicated to no bullying, this problem will continue to get worse. In the future I hope the kids will be more mature, and that this problem will not be as big, because these youth that create this problem are creating a waste in resources, and it is a problem that has to be reduced soon. The problem is only getting worse and I personally think adults should be celebrating if they can simply keep this problem from just getting worse.