Bullying

Everyone has witnessed or bullied someone before. A time when I witnessed bullying was last year at my old school. My old school was split up to popular, average, and the weird groups. I was in the average group. Usually the popular and average groups never got teased but the weird group did. There was one boy in particular called Tom, (he wasn't actually called Tom, this is just so people wouldn't know who he is) who almost everyone used to tease and call him names (but I didn't). 

Whenever he touched something, people would say, "Don't touch that! Tom put cooties on it," or "Tom touched you! You have cooties now." Whenever Tom heard this he would try to act as if it didn't bother him but you could tell that it actually did. When we had to work in groups, no one wanted to work with him. The teacher always had to put Tom in a group and everyone in the group would usually not let him do or touch anything. The odd thing was that when my friend asked the people who were teasing Tom if they believed in cooties, they all said no. 

This kept on going for the whole year. The worst thing was that when people teased and called Tom names in front of a teacher, the teacher didn't even care and never did anything. Tom never told on anyone to the teacher because if he did, he knew that he would be called a "tattle-tale" and a lot of people would dislike him even more. Tom tried asked the people teasing him to stop a few times but they always just kept teasing and calling him names. No one knew who started this but there was no reason to. Tom didn't have a problem, he was normal sized, he didn't act like a girl, and he was okay in all subjects. The good thing was that he did have a few friends. 

Now that I looked back at the situation, I think that I should helped Tom. It was unfair how people bullied him. I guess that I was just afraid of being teased if I stood up for Tom. I could have also told the people bullying him to stop being mean or I could have told a teacher. There were many things that I could do instead of ignoring the situation. Next time I see someone being bullied, I will try to help them.

Two goals that I have for this year to make ISKL a better place are:

- I will not bully anyone in any way.

- If I see someone being bullied, I will try to help them.

Graphic Citation:

http://staff.harrisonburg.k12.va.us/~jgamble/