Even though she is only in eighth grade, she goes up to the local high school for advanced math classes so she is exposed (no pun intended) to a much older world. Well as it turns out, one of the high school boys sent her a picture to her phone of his…well…err…mobile unit. Of course she could not keep quiet about it and as soon as word got out, it actually started a full out table-emptying lunch time brawl at the high school. I have no doubt that she loved all of the attention but it does not take a rocket scientist to figure out just how dangerous this can be. I am scared to death in just how sexual our young teenagers are getting and this just makes it that much worse. [note: of course the picture was deleted before anybody could get hold of her phone so there was no proof of anything]
I have quite a few former students who come to see me and so I started asking them questions about this type of stuff and they confirmed this goes on all the time. They said what is even bigger, though, is all of the phone videos of fights that are being uploaded to YouTube and they even told me about a couple of videos there of some of my other former students. Of course I went to the site and could not believe what I was seeing. These types of videos are getting some national attention and that just encourages more and more students to do it so they too can be “famous”. They are even “staging” fights which look pretty darn real.
Then as my last post talked about, yesterday my team became aware of one of our students slamming other students in a homemade video that he also uploaded to YouTube - a clear case of "cyberbullying". He has about 30 videos on there including ones that he secretly taped while in class. Then in one he taped just 2 days ago out in the field at lunch time, he interviewed various (troublemaker) students to get them to slam some of the teachers and talk about how the 8th grade teachers are “idiots and didn't even need to go to college since all they do is read out of the book”.
Wow! I am blown away by the arrogance. I have to agree with the findings from the article I referred to at the beginning:
"A study last year found teens are placing more of an emphasis on image and fame than in the past. Jean Twenge, a psychology professor at San Diego State University who studies young people's trends, found that teens are more confident and assertive than ever before."
This is a new age we are living in and it is quite a bit different than the one we knew growing up. It is so very important that we let our students know just how dangerous all of this is. Cyber-bullying is definitely the new trend and we need to educate our students about it. There is a pretty good site called Stop Cyberbullying that provides some pretty good information and is a great start if this is a new topic for you.
If you think it is not happening, just start doing some searches on YouTube. I found the videos I did simply by searching for my school name. Be careful, though, you might not like what you find...
What kind of things are you seeing with your "cybered" students?
2 comments:
I came across your blog today and found it to be right on target. Educators and parents need to keep up with what kids are doing. Our district used to pretend that there were no gangs, but my son would point out the gang signs to me on the way to his school. Keeping up with what is really happening is the only way to make a difference. I am going to put your blog on my google reader. Thanks for a great post.
While there are many good things going on in the cyber world you are correct about scary things. Many of the examples you mentioned in your article are also happening at the elementary level as well. Yes, it's scary.
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