Banish Bullying

On Monday we were allowed to wear hats to school in support of Anti-Bullying week.  I wore my favorite pink Washington Nationals cap and Janelle wore her chef hat.  To tell you the truth, I have never been bullied and I didn’t think any of the gyrls had either. I was wrong.  At lunch Janelle told me a secret, she was being bullied on her school bus.

We had an assembly and learned that bullying usually involves 3 things:

1.   Imbalance of  Power:  That means the person doing the bullying has control or power over the person being bullied.  That makes the person being bullied feel like they can’t do anything about it.

2.    Intent to Cause Harm: This means the person bullying wants to hurt you.

3.   Repetition: The bullying happens over and over again.

At the end of the assembly we signed a pledge promising to tell our parents or teachers if we are being bullied.

In Janelle’s case, the person bullying her is a 5^th grade boy who rides her bus.  He teases her about living with her grandparents and calls her a stupid 4^th grader.   Sometimes, if he likes what she has for snack, he takes it from her.

I love riding the school bus.  I was wondering why Janelle said she hated it and why her grandparents had been picking her up from school. I made Janelle promise me she would tell her grandparents about what was happening. Thankfully she did and that boy is no longer a problem.