I don't want to take up too much of your time, but I was a bully.
And I was bullied. So in elementary school, I was young and there was a kid.
I'm not going to reveal his name, but he constantly bullied me and I was
petrified of him. He would chase me around the school and everyone would
laugh. He would laugh. From that experience in elementary school, as I
went on to junior high school and high school, I told myself that I would not
and would never allow that to happen again.
My name is Isabella Cordero. I'm Anais Barriera. My name is Regina Edwards. My
name is Bobby Jean Hall. My name is Tyler Sutton Coleman. My name is
Christos Santiago. My name is Jaylin Scott and I'm from New York. My name is
Jaden Harry and I'm from Manhattan. School's great. Yeah. I love the teachers
that I have because they make it like a fun way of learning. They break down
what you learn in here, so like it's more easier for you to learn. So if you
do a test, you'll get a good score. I have a lot of friends and a lot of new
friends and old friends. My friends are nice and really close to me. I can trust
them and my favorite part of school is art, band and musical theater. I have
science and dance. The students here at Renaissance School of the Arts are
passionate and of course they're artists if they want to come here. So working
with them is always a pleasure because they're always excited. I am Craig Gatti.
I am currently a paraprofessional at Renaissance School of the Arts. I think my
students are very experienced with bullying. My name is Miss Walker and I
am the ICT teacher. I was bullied for a brief period in the third or fourth grade
because of my tooth. I had an accident when I was younger and people would
like call me SpongeBob and stuff. I would like go home and like cry to my mom and
try to understand why they were bullying me. My name is Shadeen Radigan. I am a
math instructor. It's never really cool to have other kids feel inferior. My name
is Dr. Bradley and I did have some friends in elementary school and
middle school and even maybe even up in the high school that were you know
subjected to bullying or were bullied. People bullied me because I was black and
they also bullied me because there was a pool there and I couldn't swim so I had
to so I had to swim in the other side and they had to swim in that side so they
made fun of me just because I was different from them. People used to say
that I was a little midget. I felt very bad about myself until my mom.
Usually I go in my room and lock my door and sometimes cry. It would make me like
just really really angry and mad and sad for myself. My mother said that she was
gonna come and talk to the principal about that. The kid got suspended.
Children are afraid even adults sometimes are afraid of what other people
would do or say to them. This girl she was always the popular girl and because
she was like she was always the one who had all this cool stuff. I'm not always
in um in the you know coolest wardrobe. I don't have the coolest wardrobe. Since I
was a tall one she picked on me but then one day I like got tired of it so I
stood up and I said something about it. I was always the tallest in all of my
classes so I was bullied. You will love your height one day. I knew different is
it's a whole part of like it's a part of everyone. Everyone's different in so many
ways. I don't think people wake up and decide that they're gonna just bully
this certain person. I was able to myself in fifth grade because I really didn't
like a girl and but she didn't do anything to me. It's just that I didn't I just didn't
like her at all.
We all have to feel safe when we walk in this building. I tell kids all the time
you spend more time here than you do with your actual family. Everybody is here
because we're all trying to learn and we're all trying to move into the next
level which is high school and under college but if you feel a certain way
if you feel intimidated or you feel embarrassed or anything that you can't
work at your highest potential and that makes you ineffective that makes you
that is a stumbling block for learning and that's a problem. I don't think
bullies shouldn't even exist. Why would you want to bully if you want to bully
then that means you're insecure and you're a bad person on the inside and
you're mad for a reason but you just don't know how to express it. Really
bullying is never okay because you know how people if they bully a person like
every time when somebody gets bullied people will be like oh I want to kill
myself or I want to do that to the other person and beat them up. My top
priorities is your guys safety and I know that sometimes bullying can cause the
victim to hurt themselves and I would never want any of you guys to hurt
yourself. Suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem. If you
bully someone then they want to bully you back because that's obviously like
the cycle of life is how you receive things but if you bully someone out of
no like out of no if you have no good reason like if they haven't done it to
you then I feel like that's wrong but I do I do feel like any other time
bullying is never okay. A time that is bullying is okay is when it's when you
bully somebody that that it takes it's like good but they take it like like
you're really like bullying them so it's say if I say something sarcastic but I
really mean it in like a good way then the person thinks that it's bullying but
I think that but it's really I'm not bullying her so I'm thinking it's okay
that I'm bullying her in a good way. I think if you're not careful how you're
playfully teasing someone it could easily be considered bullying. I think it is
possible to get confused with the two. Bullying is more malicious intent I
think teasing can be a little bit more playful. Once a person if I tease
someone and we're having fun and if that person identifies and says listen you
know I don't like when you say these things to me if I don't stop what I'm
doing then I become a bully. Since I was different from everyone else I didn't I
didn't want to go anywhere but since I knew different was a good thing about
everyone I continued and they left me on. It's not cool to bully other
people and take your anger out on them. It's not okay to do any of those
stuff so I wish that bully was taught a lesson. If you bully someone right then
they start feeling insecure about themselves and then they bully someone
else and the first person does it to the other person and then it's just kind
of like a pattern. It's really the bully's fault because you're taking the
amount of anger on the other person instead of you relaxing, going home, take
a stress ball or a book, read it and try to feel calm about yourself. Take your
favorite book with you to school when you get really angry just open up and
that's it. I don't know how it can exactly fix but we can make it better by
like having conversations about things that were said to you that you felt
like you felt uncomfortable or hurt by. Try to make the person feel better and
never never like make the person feel angry about their self and take it on
another person. Well what I think that we can do is for to figure out what's
happening in my life that's making me put the effect on her and becomes friend
become friends with her and get on with life. We can speak up to parents, teachers,
we can speak up to news people, we can speak up to a whole bunch of other
people instead of just keeping it into ourselves. I may get my first mission to
address the situation to get both parties involved or all parties involved
and we have to deal with that situation because bullying is a non-negotiable for
me and I would never tolerate it. Or we can either handle it for ourselves. They
think that they can handle themselves but when it gets out of control they
don't know what to do. Children don't really tell their parents when they're
getting bullied. They hold it in until they really get emotional about it. And
somebody will push one person and then one person gets pushed too hard and now
they're upset. It'll just end up in a fight and if it ends up in a fight that
other person would have to like go through the consequences. Nowadays if you
bully someone let's say someone gets in a fight and you upload the video so many
people can share it like people in China can share your video. Now that that's a
thing. Schools have adopted a no-tolerance policy for bullying so we
don't let it happen because a lot of bad things come from it. Physical, verbal,
cyber, it's all the same thing so every situation should have the same amount of
attention. But teachers or adults aren't really like the most reliable place to
get help if you're bullied, unfortunately. They make you shake hands. They just go
right back to bullying and it never works. Sometimes they don't think that it's
the truth because some kids lie about it just to get attention so they push them
away until they really realize that these kids weren't lying and that they were
being bullied. Parents should be aware of when their child is getting bullied
because when you get bullied you have this type of sad face all the time and
you're always glumping. Like okay for example right if I was home what if I
was at home right and like my mom didn't see me talking right like cuz I
talked so much like okay so if my mom didn't see me talking and she saw me
saw that I was sad then she would know that something was wrong with me so then
she would ask me like if something was happening at school that she should know
about. Teachers should know about this and take care of it social parents. The
students have to have courage to speak up to the adults just tell the teacher
and let them handle it. As long as adults are alerted that it's happening as
long as somebody knows that there's bullying going on then they could do
something about it. I do pride myself in playing maybe a mentor role to kids who
feel comfortable speaking to someone who they feel can relate. You got to tell
your parents you have to tell an adult you have to tell somebody so we could
take action. However if we don't know if the adults in a building don't know that
it's going on then it we won't be able to do anything about it. The teacher well
I think yes my teacher did handle it but I didn't listen to her because at that
time I didn't care of what she said so I think that she did do something she
told the principal and stuff and told my mother but I thought that I really didn't
care about it so I just kept on bullying it so what I think is that they
tried their best to stop making me bullied her but it wasn't working.
Sometimes you can open a program about bullying free so that that means that
there's no bullying you know whatever no no no being mean to anyone. Then you
should get like a social worker for them or counseling to calm down their
issues and tell them how you're feeling so you won't take it on to another
person. Since I'm like really tall I usually stand up to that person I say
why are you bullying these people this person when he's smaller than you. I
think that the person who is getting bullied will tell will just tell the
teacher on their own but sometimes that doesn't happen. When I saw other people
bullying other people I didn't say anything because I thought it was funny
the way they were bullying the person and I thought that I can keep on going with
it so I bullied the person too and also that like every time somebody bullies
somebody I don't correct what they're doing I just follow what they're doing
and just keep on going and laughing at it and laughing at it. Here at RSA for
basically what I've seen throughout like my class and in the lunchroom and
outside I don't see a lot of bullying going on maybe I've seen one or two
things but I don't usually see somebody bullying somebody else. Nothing really
happens around around your friends. The staff is always there like when we're
walking to another class right you can see Mr. Bradley the principal right
there. It's kind of like they're overprotective but some people think
that but I think that they're really not. This is a art school so people people
probably get to express their type of art like what they do what how their
difference from someone else. Teachers are making students apologize. Students
feel comfortable talking to the adults in this building and we have a much
smaller group of students so we get a chance to monitor everybody at a higher
rate.
Bullying isn't worse or better in any other schools. I feel like in schools where
the behavior problems where the adults are more strict than there are less
bullying problems because of fear of like the students fear of like trouble or
anything like that so. I have seen a tiny bit of bullying and I've been reported
that I've been a bully to somebody else too but I think it's happening less but
as the time gets more as it progresses then I think there will be more
bullying. Have students gotten engaged in a few conflicts of course but I have
not been alerted to bullying during this school year. I think most of the times
it's the bully's fault and sometimes it can be the kid's fault. It certainly
isn't the person being bullied's fault that they are being bullied it's
definitely not their fault. Bullying is both the bully's fault and the person
who's getting bullied because one the bully should not be doing that to the
person because they know it's wrong and two the person who's getting bullied
shouldn't it's their fault because that they should be telling a teacher as
soon as it starts not just waiting there. It was my fault because I should have
never let my anger go on her whatever was happening I should have let the anger
go on me and fix the problem myself and not say other stuff about what's
happening to my life and I'm bringing on to hers. Being a bully was okay for me
and that I could just keep on doing it because I thought that it would be cool
to do it because everybody else was doing it and that I thought that it was
okay and that I wanted to be all cool and stuff but it really wasn't okay. You
know when you're younger there's a lot of peer pressure and students especially
in middle school and in the early grades of high school it's very important
that you're viewed by your peers as somebody that is cool or somebody that
is you know fun to be around. As you get older and older and you start
establishing yourself more you kind of learn that if anybody is mean to you or
anybody isn't nice to you you could live your life without them. There's millions
and millions of people out there in the world that are going to be nice to you
so if one person is not going to be nice to you later for them move on to the
next person. I really sometimes when I came home I felt that I should have never
bullied her and I should have said sorry and stuff but then on the other hand I
thought that you can be cool and stuff so that's why I didn't say anything or do
anything with her. I was a bully I was somewhat of a popular kid so I guess I
had an image to uphold. I felt like it was necessary to have others feel a little
more inferior than I was at the time so if I would change anything would be my
mindset because it's not cool to have all the kids think that they're lesser
than you are. It can really be terrible it could really affect people in
terrible ways if they're being bullied. I think that my friend Travis ended up
learning from the situation that he's got he had to stand up for himself. I
think that something he had to learn was how does he advocate for himself how
does he make sure that nobody picks on him and not kind of do things for people
so that way he would make people happy go to stand up and be your own person. It'll
get worse it'll get harder but it'll be over middle school does not last forever
just try to find someone you trust a good friend a teacher and yeah there you
go your best friend teacher meet good people try to be a good person you'll
be alright. I don't want to take up too much of your time but I was a bully and
I was bullied and I promised myself whenever I saw this kid again the bully
from elementary school that I would have my payback. I saw this young man maybe a
few years ago and he was a young man who was at a train station asking for money
and he didn't recognize me initially but I recognized him and I introduced I
reintroduced myself you know I told him who I was and we had a slight
conversation and he began to cry and I didn't cry but I felt the same emotion.
What I can say about about him at that moment is I instantly forgave him
because we were young we were kids he made me feel very bad and he expressed how
apologetic he was and I took his word for it.
