Bartolone bullymag

Bullying Clouds Our World “We need to get people to consider how the other person feels at the time of being bullied and how that might affect them later on today, tomorrow, and in their future lives.”

-Austin

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“Everyone has a bully story to tell. “ -Kerry

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Not So True Friends

By Claire http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-NWAKCEsyYsw/TbJC-mmk_vI/AAAAAAAACKE/i9GF2WKtWBE/s1600/BULLYING.jpg

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thought we were friends; a close-knit group that would never turn on each other like you all did to me. It hit me like a ton of bricks. Is it because a girl that not many people like invited me on vacation to Florida and I went, were you jealous? Did I do something to hurt any of you? Having my questions unanswered and still not knowing the real reason I came back from spring break to no friends still bugs me to this day. There was an exception for apparently my two true friends, who were still bystanders, not sticking up for me.

They didn’t stick up for me because you girls were plain mean.

I want you to all know how you made me feel during these last months of seventh grade. I’m sure none of you have ever been in this situation, for you truly are bullies. I returned to school with all five of you ignoring me at first, standing on your pedestals, thinking you were better than me. I was confused to why this was happening to me. Pretty soon you would write me mean notes, tell everyone else in the class to ignore me…“don’t talk to her”, say horrible comments behind my back and to my face, pull my hair, and even began to get students from other schools to turn against me. You made my life a living hell.

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I refused going to school, but of course my parents would force me to attend. Each class was so lonely with no one to talk to, along with lunch being embarrassing with none of you wanting to sit with me, and recess was like your stomping grounds for bully-mania. I returned home everyday to cry myself to sleep becoming so depressed.

I’m sure none of you thought this was taking that big a toll on me. You had no idea and to this day I’m sure you don’t know how big an impact you had on my life. I never showed at school how you made me feel for it would only give you more ammo to use against me. I wasn’t invited to your slumber parties for that is when you would decide how to torture me next. One of the biggest occurrences that hurt me the most was, I actually had the nerve to attend the school dance with one of my only friends as the time. But you all had to ruin that didn’t you? Making a boy that I liked, come up to me and cuss me out. Ruining my friend’s birthday because I was upset and had to leave the dance. Is that really who you want to be? The type stopbullying.gov

of person to make an innocent girl cry and ruin her grade school experiences?

I’m sure you all thought that you were forgiven when you decided to “forgive” me. Saying to me one day at recess, that you all talked about it; saying “if you got in a car crash one day and didn’t survive, we would never be able to forgive ourselves and never be able to say were sorry.” At the moment I heard this, I felt relief, but it was never the same again. You weren’t stopping being bullies because you were really sorry, it was because my mother decided to call your mother’s and I’m sure they forced you all to be nice to me. I was embarrassed for my mother to stand up for me; I wanted to handle my own battles. I thought this would only make you all more mad, which it did at first on the soccer field, tripping me. But I got right back up; you girls can’t keep me down.

I will forever be a stronger person from this horrible experience and in my eyes you will all always be the biggest weaklings. Why would you turn against one of your best friends? Never officially telling me why, but deciding to make my life miserable. I know we started to hang out again after the fact, but that doesn’t change how you have always made me feel from the day I realized none of you were ever truly my friends. I will forgive you girls for tormenting me, but I hope you have learned something from treating another human being the way that you did. It is not okay and never will be.

Bullying Teacher

By Taylor http://nothingbutdollsonstrings.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/coach-yelling-at-a-student.jpg

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ne very specific account I had growing up dealt with teacher bullying. Teacher bullying is something that happens more frequently than people think and it also happens in many different ways. My experience happened when I was in the 5th grade. I went to a small private school and I absolutely loved it until 5th grade.

My experience began at the first part of the school year.

Being 5th graders, we were the oldest group of “elementary” students in my Pre K-8 school. Because we were the oldest, we gained special opportunities we didn’t have before. One of these privileges was being able to bring our own bottle of water to have with us during class. Looking back now, it seems very silly but just having that privilege made everything feel special. So naturally, everyone in my class had their very own bottle of water that they kept with them simply because they could.

As a human being, it’s only natural that if we have water in front of us, we’ll drink it. And also being human, once we drink the water some biology happens and before we know it we’ve got a full bladder. It’s also pretty well known that children generally take a while to master the act of holding their bladder, so as a result my stopbullying.gov

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class would take more trips to the bathroom than usual.

I would drink my water in class just as everyone else and I would go to the group bathroom trips just as everyone else. But with me, it was a little different. Although I would use the bathroom at our allotted times, I still found myself needing to go between the trips we were taking. A strange trait that I acquired from my grandmother is that I have an abnormally small bladder. Nothing too crazy, just that I generally have to use the restroom about three times the amount the next person does.

Because I was in the 5th grade and doing the same thing as everyone else, I had not yet mastered being able to hold my bladder until our next restroom trip. So once I felt the urgency, I would raise my hand and ask my teacher if I could go to the restroom. At first she would allow me to go, but once we got a little farther into the school year things really changed. I would raise my hand and she would basically humiliate me in front of the class. She would say things such as “Taylor, maybe you’d be doing better in this class if you weren’t always trying to skip out and go to the bathroom.” Just a side noteI wasn’t doing completely awful in my classes, but I was certainly struggling. We later found out that I have ADHD and that led to the struggles.

The tormenting from my teacher continued until one day I told my dad what was going on. He was obviously infuriated and immediately

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about myself rather than hep me get better.

By the time interim reports came out, my grades reflected that I was going a lot worse than I should have been. I mentioned that tests were difficult for me, but tests don’t make up an entire grade.

My dad scheduled a conference with my teacher where she explained to him that I was simply not turning anything in at all. My dad was extremely confused because he clearly saw that I was doing homework every night.

Long story short, there were many more meetings with my father, my teacher and my principle. What came as the end result was that my teacher “found” all the assignments I had actually turned in that she had “misplaced.” I can’t exactly

“Standing up

to your bully can be very intimidating at the time, but the reward is much greater.”

called my teacher to explain my problems with my bladder. She in turn explained to him that she would not “allot” me any extra trips to the restroom without a note from my doctor. Although my dad was still angry, he did not want me going through school not being able to use the restroom, he went to my doctor and got a note.

Problem solved, right? I wish. Because my teacher now had to let me go to the restroom because of my doctor’s note, she found other ways to torment me. As a mentioned before, I was starting to struggle in my classes. I would do all of my work and participate in my classes, but once test time came around that’s really where I would sink. Noticing my struggles, my teacher began to pick on me in front of the whole class. She would read our grades aloud so that the whole class could hear. She did things to make me feel worse

say how it was only MY assignments that she had mysteriously misplaced. Once everything was said and done, I was able to transfer into a different class with a different teacher.

I’m not sure why my teacher wanted to bully me.

That’s something still to this day I cannot figure out. But she did, and as a result 5th grade was one of the worst times of my life. One

thing I learned from this experience is that you need to stand up to your bully. Without standing up and letting my dad know everything that was happening, I probably would have failed the 5th grade. Standing up to your bully can be very intimidating at the time, but the reward is much greater.

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“Cliques”

By Kerry

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veryone has a bully story to tell. Whether they were the one bullied, doing the bullying, or a bystander, everyone has a story.

Most of us alternate between at least two, if not all of these in our lives. I am going to describe how I was a couple of these throughout my life.

My first memory of bullying was in elementary school. This was a horrible time for me. It’s not exact situations I remember here, as I have probably blocked most of them from my head, but I remember bits and pieces. I remember being very young in elementary, not sure the exact age, and I didn’t fit in anywhere. Even from that young of an age, I had no interest in being in a “click” or whatever they are called. I am an individual that doesn’t feel comfortable acting like a group of people and looking up to one or two main leaders, which is exactly what a click tends to look like. I remember being on the playground and either hanging out with the teacher the whole time or playing by myself. When I was in elementary school, I finally made some friends with some boys because I loved Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, so I played with them and my turtles on the playground. You can imagine how “popular” this made me. As far as my appearance goes, I never cared for fashion. I’m a jeans and t-shirt kind of girl. The girls picked on me for this. I also got made fun of everyday for my lips. I don’t remember any of the names I was called, I just know I went home crying everyday begging my mom to get me surgery to make my lips smaller. Funny, now those same girls that made fun of me for that probably pay to have their lips look like mine.

Then came middle school. Middle school was brutal as well.

It was a lot of the same stuff. I remember having the same kinds of problems as far as not fitting in with any one crowd so I kind of stuck to myself and a few others. I sat with a small group of people for lunch. I remember the whole game at the lunch table where if

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somebody didn’t like you, you weren’t welcome to sit. It happened to me when I was sitting with some more “popular” kids, and it happened to others around me. This was a time where I played a bystander role more often than later in life. I didn’t stick up for those people, even when they were my friends. I remember people fighting over boys, but that got worse in high school also.

High school is where I decided for myself I’d had enough of this bullying. I remember my freshman year, I had a “friend” who spread rumors about me because I started dating a “popular” football player and she liked him. I will never forget hearing the rumor. The funny thing is the rumor was true of her so she was projecting. I thought when I heard this rumor that I would never be able to repair my reputation. I came to realize later, people move on after awhile to the next juiciest rumor. I began to understand how to deal with the situation. The angrier I got, the more people would want to talk about it. I just ignored the situation and it went away. I ended up being an individual in high school who didn’t have to be a part of any “click”. I was well liked, but I didn’t really give too much value on that. I hung out with everyone. I stood up for people being bullied, and since I was a football player’s girlfriend, I usually got people to stop bullying whoever they were bullying. I did my own thing and dressed how I wanted to dress and said what I wanted to say. I had a positive high school experience for that reason.

That’s my story but I know everybody’s not as lucky as me. Had I given any credit to what any of those people thought of me, especially when I had the nasty rumor spread about me, I realize I could have taken many turns that would put me in a very negative place then and even now. I can see why people feel so hopeless that they commit suicide. Bullying is a serious problem and I believe that the situation can be helped by educating the schools, parents, and students about bullying and let them know what they can do about it. Also, sharing our stories with each other helps.

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