Bullying

There has been a huge focus on bullying over the last few years because of childhood suicides. When I was teaching, if I saw bullying, I did all I could to stop it, but often it went on in the hallways under the teacher's radar.

I remember three occurrences that required my intervention.
The first two happened around a boy who drew the foul. He was a special ed. student, had an odor and was obnoxious, and the other kids were relentless in letting him know about both. (This was high school--seniors, to be exact.)
The first time, I dragged his taunter into the hall and told him that he was putting me in the untenable position of having to defend "Jack". "You know that Jack has problems. He doesn't have the power to change his circumstances. When you attack him, I am forced to defend the indefensible. How would you feel if you were in his place??" I don't know that it helped, but at least the kid who was on the attack understood that I was aware of the problems.
The second time happened with Jack again as the focus. He was asking for trouble. The kid he was drawing into the fire (Dustin) was a football athlete with the power to knock Jack out. In fact, his fists were clenched, ready to do battle...but I watched as he fumed and backed down.
I wrote Dustin's parents a note that day, telling them that he had been the better man by walking away from a situation that would only have caused him to be suspended from school. (Years later, I heard from them, indicating that they still had the note!) I don't know whatever happened to Jack, but Dustin went on to become a social studies teacher in a suburban school district.

The last time I had to deal directly with bullying came when I was teaching 8th grade. I had an autistic special ed. youngster who had a fine mind but also had a horrible stutter and an inability to communicate readily...and a temper. I did my darnedest to keep him away from kids who would taunt him, but it wasn't easy. I had to be vigilant whenever he was in the room. If someone did something to upset him, his eyes would get wild which would be my clue to remove him quickly from whatever was going on before he "blew". I liked Sean...I just couldn't do much to help him. One day, I pulled him out in the hall and told him that people who pick on him were doing so because of their own insecurities--at which point he told me, "Then if they feel bad about themselves, they must know how it feels to be me." My heart broke. I said, "Now you are going to make me cry"...and I did. It defused that particular moment, but when Sean moved on to high school, he didn't even make it through freshman year before being removed to homebound instruction. So sad!

I was also a victim of bullying. My family moved to Oak Park, IL (a western suburb of Chicago), when I was just beginning 6th grade. The school librarian planned a program of "Americana" which included someone to sing the Negro spiritual "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot". The music teacher auditioned the class to pick the soloist. Nancy Hartigan was the undisputed best singer in the 6th grade, but when Mrs. Boehm went around the room asking each student to sing a few bars, she asked me to sing mine twice. The decision was made that Nancy and I would share the solo--she, one verse, and me, another. That seemed to set things off.

Thereafter, Nancy and her friend Janice seemed to have it out for me. Whenever I was around them, they whispered nastily about how smart I thought I was. There was even some whispering about beating me up. I was a pretty naive kid. Had never faced this kind of thing before, and I was scared. Finally, I confessed what was happening to my mother. I didn't want her to do anything about it because I thought it would make things worse, but she went to the principal anyway. He called a convocation of all of the 6th grade girls. Without singling me out, he alluded to the fact that he had heard there was some bullying going on and that if he heard any more about it, he would take action. And that, believe it or not, was the end of it!

When we moved on to high school, Nancy became a non-entity in the music world. I, however, had three solo parts in school productions and had the lead in all three plays/musicals my senior year. I have no idea whatever happened to Nancy. I'm just glad that I lived in the days when school authority actually meant something. I also hope I made a little bit of difference in the lives of kids I worked with as a teacher. I don't think I'll ever know for sure...