School Bullying Council

View full sizeYfat Yossifor | The Bay City TimesMadison Marciniak, left, and Kelsey Zimmerman, both freshman at Central, started an anti-bullying club. They will talk with parents about cyber bullying on Feb 15.

BAY CITY — With the rise of social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, schoolyard bullies have a new place to intimidate their victims. Instead of playground insults, students can now inflict damage through a tweet or a post.

But Bay City Central freshmen Madison Marciniak and Kelsey Zimmerman are trying to put a stop to that.

The two have started a club at Central designed to raise awareness of cyber bullying. The club, called The Positive Post Pledge Club, asks students to take time before posting hurtful words about other students on the Internet.

“We’re just trying to stop cyber bullying from going on in our schools because it’s gotten worse throughout the years,” Madison said.

And they don’t just want to let students know. The two are meeting with parents at T.L. Handy Middle School, 601 Blend St., at 8 a.m. on Wednesday to present the effects cyber bullying can have on students. They also plan to give parents tips on ways they can stop bullying from taking place inside their homes.

“We want to inform the parents of it, because that’s where it starts, at home,” Madison said. “A lot of the time, they don’t think their kid is doing it, and so we just want to get everyone involved to stop it.”

The group started from Madison and Kelsey’s own experience with bullying. During their eighth grade year, Kelsey and Madison were on the same volleyball team. Following a loss, Kelsey said, girls would post on Facebook or tweet about Madison’s mistakes during the game.

“I went along with it and started tweeting about Madison too,” Kelsey said.

Madison’s mother Cathy, a teacher at Handy, said she could tell something was wrong with her daughter.

Then teammates began tweeting about Kelsey.

“I realized how bad it made me feel,” Kelsey said. “I didn’t want anyone else to feel like that.”

Kelsey approached Madison’s whole family to apologize and explain her actions.

“It was uncomfortable at first because it was my own daughter, but Kelsey was so adult about it,” Cathy Marciniak said. “She was so accountable and she’s a good kid.”

This year, the girls decided to turn the negative situation into something positive for students, and started the club with the help of Central teacher Jill Moore. In addition to collecting signatures of students pledging to “Think before I tweet,” and “Ponder before I post,” the girls have also passed out wrist bands and reached out to students at the middle school.

Madison said the response has been positive, including emotional reactions from students at Handy.

“We had some kids cry about it because it’s happened to them or they feel bad because what they’ve done,” Madison said.

Cathy Marciniak said the message resonates with students in the middle school because they look up to high school students.

“We’ve talked to the kids at length about it, they don’t really listen to that,” Cathy Marciniak said. “But when their peers, the kids they look up to and the kids in high school come over, they were taken aback by it and immediately wanted to be on board.”

Kelsey said parents have also responded well to their story.

“All the teachers and adults I’ve talked to so far are excited about it,” Kelsey said.

The girls hope to continue the momentum with movie nights at both Central and Handy and Kelsey said the long-term goal of the group is simple: make the Internet a safer place.

http://www.mlive.com/news/bay-city/index.ssf/2012/02/bay_city_central_students_teac.html

Online spats between school children are spiralling out of control, leading to hate messages, violence and death threats. Picture: The Daily Telegraph
Source: The Advertiser

ONLINE spats between school children are spiralling out of control, leading to hate messages, violence and even death threats.

Experts say 10 per cent of all children now claim to have been cyber-bullied, The Daily Telegraph reported.

The enraged father of one teenage schoolgirl became so incensed by comments he believed a boy had made about his daughter on a social networking site that he accosted him in the street and threatened to “slit his throat”.

The man approached the Year 8 boy as he walked to a bus stop on the state’s mid-north coast and pushed and threatened him before boarding the bus, where he issued further death threats to the boy and other students.

In another disturbing case, a mum went to a school in western NSW and urged her Year 10 daughter to assault another girl after an exchange on a social networking site.

Both girls were suspended, police were called and the mum was banned from entering the school under the Inclosed Lands Act.

In the Tuggerah Lakes area on the NSW central coast, comments on a social networking site led to a Year 8 female being assaulted by another Year 8 girl.

One of the students, who sustained swelling to her forehead and complained of feeling dizzy and nauseous, was taken to hospital. The other girl injured her hand.

Schools increasingly are asking police to investigate serious student online bullying and have shored up cyber safety programs in a bid to head off more trouble.

The NSW Department of Education and Communities has enlisted international expert Professor Donna Cross to help advise students and families about online behaviour.

Professor Cross, from Edith Cowan University in Western Australia, specialises in preventing and responding to aggression. She said about 10 per cent of children now reported being cyber-bullied.

Children who cyber-bullied also were 18 times more likely to bully others in the real world, Professor Cross said.

She said bullies often had higher levels of depression than the victims: “They’re also more likely to be engaging in problem behaviour – unsafe sexual behaviours, smoking, using drugs, graffiti, stealing and truanting.”

Bullying peaks in children at about Year 5 and again at about Year 7 or Year 8.

The first peak coincides with children discovering the power of the peer group and creating their own social pecking order. The second peak occurs when children move from primary school to secondary school.

Researchers have found cyber-bullied kids suffer poor academic achievement, anxiety, depression, poorer physical health, higher school absenteeism, increased loneliness and low self-esteem.

The Department of Education said Facebook could not be accessed on school computers. Its Digital Citizenship website, which deals with bullying and other issues, has received thousands of hits from all over the world. 

http://www.news.com.au/technology/cyber-bullying-spiralling-out-of-control-in-nsw-schools/story-e6frfro0-1226233680802

The Australia Communications and Media Authority has launched an out of home campaign – a first for the government body – as it looks to raise awareness about digital reputation, sexting, geolocation and cyberbullying among teenagers in Sydney. The posters contain QR codes that enable teens to directly access the cybersmart website by using their cameraphones. Creative and media were devised by Mediabrands.

ACMA is using outdoor following research from the Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, which suggested that teenagers pay attention to ads on street fixtures.

“The key message is presented in a strong bold typeface, in a tone of voice that aims to speak with the target rather than at them,’ explained ACMA chairman, Chris Chapman.

The campaign runs until June 19.

The cybersmart website hosts a video targeted at parents that helps them understand the online space in which their children exist.

June 13th, 2011 at 5:11 pm

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