Kids will be Kids Part 2: Cyberbullying

http://finance.yahoo.com/family-home/article/111504/as-bullies-go-digital-parents-play-catch-up

 So, this article talks about cyberbullying and the legal ramifications of it and what to do in regards to contacting the parent of the child who cyberbullied.

I am just wondering how I, as a future teacher, will address cyberbullying.  And, like has been said many times on this blog, I don't know.  However, in the article, there is an interesting story of a woman who was going to school for cyberbullying and her daughter ended up cyberbullying a student.  Things got worse from there, and then the two of them (mother and daughter) started talking to each other.  The mother got the daughter a puppy, and the daughter really loved the puppy.  And the mother used that as a perfect tool for teaching her daughter.  She said, "How would you feel if someone through a rock at him?"  And with that, her daughter started crying.  But, that is a perfect teaching moment that was surprisingly appropriate.

And it relates again to my thinking of the last post on bullying.  Getting her daughter a puppy to me would imply that she was reinforcing her daughter for cyberbullying.  But giving attention to students who bully who may be in my classes seems to be reinforcing the bully, not the victim of the bully.  There is a story that I heard two years ago.  It goes like this.  A bunch of people were having a delicious 4th of July picnic on the Mississippi River when they saw in the distance up the river a basket floating down the river.  One of the people swam out into the river and grabbed the basket and brought it ashore, and everyone was filled with horror when they found that there was a baby in the basket.  They thought that that was bad, but then they looked up the river only to find that there were hundreds of baskets coming down the river.  They all form a line so that none of the baskets could get through down the river.  And they save as many as they can.  Then, they miss one.  And they become really discouraged.  And someone has a very bright idea and gets out of the water.  Everyone in the river is very angry with them and yelling them and screaming "Don't you care about these baskets?"  And as he is walking up the river, he pauses and turns around and says quietly, "You are saving the baskets by catching them once they are in the river, but I'm going to go up river and stop whoever is throwing the baskets into the river."

The basket in this story is the student who is bullied.  And the person throwing the baskets into the river is the bully.  If I help the bully, then nobody will have to help the student who is bullied, because the bully will not bully him.  I will help the bully by seeing him first and foremost as a human being, then his actions.  He is a person with a story that would break any heart listening to it, but no one listens to it because all they see is a bully.  I will fight my own biases (Which I will have many because I, myself, was bullied) and see that student for who he really is.