Antibullying

Bullying takes it’s dangerous affect on many throughout the united states according to One call now this affects 15-25% of our students within the public school systems. Bullying can be verbal , physical and/or Psychological. Most times the cause for bullying according to One call now is the imbalance of ones power, multiple incidents between the same students and their friends with the intent to cause harm to another whether it be just to hurt ones feelings or to cause bodily harm. Bullying has become a wide spread epidemic that is way out of control. The harm that bullying can do to another is beyond grasp of those who have never had this problem. One way to prevent or help prevent bullying in schools is by peer mentoring. Bullying is not something that has no solution because it does we as people just overlooked the long term affects by the passiveness of “oh it is a phase.”

Peer mentoring can be affective in anti-bullying programs but just like any major change it is going to require strong leadership. What is meant by strong leadership? It means to lead by example. Children only repeat the behavior that they see in the adults and environment around them. In Lincoln Public schools in Nebraska , they have taken a different approach to bullying which they see as an innovative socio-ecological approach with this approach they are doing one on one peer mentoring treating both bullies and victims the same. They call this program the TeamMates program and it has been utilized since 1991 in Nebraska schools. In 2007 there was a study conducted to see how well the program worked, 44 % of students that participated improved their grades, 72% reduced the number of referrals for disciplinary action, and 86% percent of the students who participated improved their over all attendance. These are real numbers and accounts for just how effective peer mentoring can be in a anti-bullying program.

There are other programs just like this one mentioned above according to the...