Bullying

Pink Shirt day was this week, to spread awareness of bullying.  This tradition started in Nova Scotia when a high school boy was picked on by his peers for wearing a pink shirt.  The next day, some of the football players at his school responded by wearing the same pink shirt the next day.  Cool right?

I've had my fair share of experience with bullying.  In grade 6, I starting getting picked on for being a 'Teachers Pet' for staying after school was done to help clean the white boards.  It seems silly to me now, but I know that back then it really hurt me.  In grade 8, I had a group of kids that I thought were my really good friends make a facebook group about me, posting things about me that weren't true, and trying to make me seem, literally, like a 'devil'.

Last year in grade 10, I was bullied even worse by a group of guys that were in my gym/science class.  They liked to mock me in the hallways and throw things at me as I walked by.  In class, they would single me out, and make extremely inappropriate comments towards me in front of my peers and teachers.  The disappointing part was, my teachers knew it was going on, and didn't do anything to stop it from happening; it started getting so bad, that I didn't want to wake up to go to school in the morning, and I would make any excuse I could think of to get out of class for extended periods of time.  But, I didn't retaliate.  I could have easily sat back and ridiculed them as hard as they ridiculed me; and there were times that I made that choice to say something back that I knew was wrong.  I didn't reach out for someone to put an end to it until these guys added me to their conversation on facebook so that I could read their conversation that completely tore me apart.

Why am I posting this on my blog?  It's not to try and gain sympathy points from everyone; yeah, this stuff was pretty bad, and I felt sorry for myself at the time, but I AM a stronger person because of what these kids did to me.  I realize that now, but there are unfortunately some individuals that are bullied 10x worse than I every have been, and they most likely will never reach out for help.  

As an instructor of the kids classes, I believe that it is important to make my story public so that maybe my students can some day read it and learn from it.  And maybe, someone will see that they can push through and find a safe-haven from bullying.  

Bullying hurts; and believe it or not, we have all been the 'big bully on the playground' at one point in our lives.  Bullying hurts, but there IS help out there to make it stop.