Our group tackled the topic of cyber bullying. Our main inquiry questions were focused on the following:
What is it?
Where is it?
How can we prevent or mitigate it?
The topic of cyberbullying, and bullying in general is very relevant to teaching and learning as it directly impacts students’ well-being. Access to the internet is inevitable and platforms for social engagement where cyberbullying can thrive. It is everywhere at all times, making it difficult to control and monitor. As teachers, it is our responsibility and moral obligation to care for our students and their well-being, so intervening, raising awareness and providing support is crucial. Addressing this issue in education is essential to fostering a safe and supportive environment for students.
With cyberbullying comes many negative things. For instance, cyberbullying can lead to emotional distress, decreased self-esteem, poor mental health, higher absenteeism, and a variety of negative physical effects caused by stress in students. Ignoring or inadequately addressing cyberbullying can lead to a toxic learning space where students could have their academics and social interactions negatively impacted.
Tackling cyberbullying is an insurmountable task, but it must be done. Some ways in which cyberbullying can be mitigated are through raising awareness, such as with initiatives like Common Sense Education. In this, teacher can access pre-made lessons for all grade levels on how to tackle cyber bullying. Teacher can also encourage their schools to get involved in initiating anti-bullying campaigns and invite guest speakers to speak on the topic and reach a mass audience. Furthermore, teachers can help direct their students to counseling services. School counseling resources are an obvious first chpoice as the teacher has access to school faculty who can help students through tough times associated with cyberbullying. They can also direct students to online counseling platforms like Better Help and their sister site Teen Counseling, communicating with the students and their parents to find a solution to the bullying.
For the full presentation: please see the link here
My contribution in this project was to focus on cyberbullying prevention strategies. In this, I researched ways that we, as future teachers, can contribute to the solving this problem by consulting with Google. I found websites that offered solutions, links and suggestions to cyberbullying prevention and mitigation. I then took the best and most realistic answers and included them in the presentations slides with resource links to some of the suggestions. I was responsible for not only the research, but the slide design and oral presentation portion of this component. Overall, I learned a lot of great resources to utilize if this problem occurs in my career. In particular, the Common Sense Education resources I found to be the most impactful as it provides pre-made lessons I can access at any given time to address this topic with my students and help raise awareness. While this assignment provided me with some new knowledge, I didn’t particularly want to do this topic for our project. Other teams chose technology tools to discuss and I feel like that might have been a better option to go with for the sake of my own interests. However, it was great to learn about this topic nonetheless.
