“Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one’s definition of your life; define yourself!”
—HARVEY FIERSTEIN

My President’s Messages this year revolve around several key issues for 21st-century teachers. This fifth column focuses on the topics of bullying and caring in schools. Teachers in my graduate courses at Michigan State University, as well as teachers I have interacted with around the United States and abroad, are concerned with these topics.

Teachers and parents alike realize that bullying is a huge problem in today’s schools. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, nearly 1 out of 3 U.S. students ages 12–18 said they had been bullied during the 2007 school year.

Bullying is increasingly viewed as an important contributor to youth violence, including homicide and suicide. Case studies of the shootings at Colum-bine High School and other U.S. schools have suggested that bullying was often a factor. These serious problems, which can impede our efforts to teach reading, are preventable if we create an atmosphere of caring in the classroom.

What is our responsibility?

According to James Kirylo (2006), some teachers view as their mission to “save” children. In reality, however, the mission of the teacher is to reflec-tively teach and to continuously seek ways to facilitate meaningful learning.

In that light, creating a safe place in which to learn is vital in providing all students with equal opportunity. The purpose of education is to ensure that all children—victims and bullies alike—gain access to knowledge, skills, and information that will prepare them to contribute to society.

Creating a caring classroom starts the very first day of school and may be the most important thing a teacher can do during that first week. As with everything else, teachers should have high expectations when it comes to caring.

Susan Fitzell points out that student achievement increases when students feel comfortable in their learning environments. A caring classroom also al-lows the teacher to spend more time teaching and less time handling conflicts. On her website (www.aimhieducational.com/BuildingaCaringClass.html), Fitzell recommends 12 tips for building a caring classroom community.

Creating such a community provides a warm, safe environment for students to learn and grow. Maslow’s “hierarchy of needs” states that having one’s basic needs met provides the foundation for building higher levels of understanding. We cannot expect our students to critically read texts and interpret multiple perspectives when their basic needs for “safety” and “belonging” are not met.

In a caring classroom setting, children will be able to experience a positive and productive sense of their own power and abilities—a feeling some chil-dren may not have in other life settings. Rarely, if ever, has a generation of children been raised in such an uncertain atmosphere. Constant change and myriad messages—from the media, parents, teachers, and peers—can make it difficult for children to find stable, consistent moral and ethical standards to guide their development.

Preventing future tragedies

In order to have a cooperative, caring classroom, we need to help children cultivate the traits of friendship, sharing, respectfulness, truthfulness, and caring. These are the ways that teachers can help to prevent such tragedies as the Columbine shootings. Students from different classes, ethnicities, relig-ions, and languages need to learn to become more accepting of difference.

Education is under the gun in many ways. In a literal sense, the threat of violence is so pervasive in many schools that an atmosphere of fear exists. Bullies perceive their worlds in very self-centered ways, and we need to offer them ways to see the world from others’ perspectives.

When we educate children to critically read and think about multiple perspectives we may be preventing the development of future bullies who might contribute to the serious financial, political, and religious problems we have seen in recent times. Individuals, corporations, and even countries behave badly when driven by fear or greed.

Creating classroom communities helps students feel connected to each other in a spirit of trust instead of fear. Students can learn to resolve conflict peacefully instead of violently. The safety net of the classroom allows students to take risks, make mistakes, and rejoice in new learning opportunities. This becomes even more important at a time when the emphasis on high-stakes testing threatens to suck the creativity out of teaching as many districts teach to the test while dropout rates remain high and literacy rates remain stagnant.

In caring classrooms, students begin to take responsibility and engage in their own learning. These skills will enhance the quality of life, peace, and collaboration that make up the out-of-school literacies that 21st-century students need.

References

Kirylo, James (2006). Working with a diverse student population: The mission is not to save, but to reflectively teach. Module of The Connextions Projects. http://cnx.org/content/m14073/latest/. U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, School Crime Supplement to the National Crime Victimization Survey, 2007.

Sobering statistics

Statistics reported by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health & Human Development (NICHD) and other sources paint a bleak picture of bullying in the United States.

• In a recent study, 77% of students said they have been bullied mentally, verbally, or physically.
• One out of 5 kids in grades 6–10 admits to being a bully, or doing some bullying.
• About 2.8 million high school students were pushed, shoved, tripped, or spit on in 2007.
• Approximately 900,000 high school students reported being cyberbullied in 2007.

Creating caring classrooms (February/March). Reading Today 28(4), 12.