“Courage is fire, and bullying is smoke.” –Benjamin Disraeli (British Prime Minister and Novelist. 1804-1881)

One of the ongoing challenges amongst leaders in education is preventing and managing cyberbullying. This has been an issue for me through my entire (although short) career, and continues to be to this day. As a matter of fact, the first bullying situation I ever had to work with was cyberbullying, and it remains to be the most challenging.

Several school districts, including Lindenwold, have policies that address bullying. In the past, school districts mostly dealt with incidents of bullying that occurred in the school. Now, with increased access to technology, school districts, including ours, have policies that allow us to address any situation, in or out of school, that can disrupt a students learning, including all forms of bullying and harassment.

So, yes, it's a huge step that we have actions that we can take when someone is being cyberbullies, but how do we prevent it? This has been racking my brain for years. I have seen so many students hurt by posts that people have put on their Myspace pages. More than once, I've seen fake Myspace pages made for students with the sole purpose of publishing false information about the person, or to manipulate another. Many are done with no purpose but to completely embarrass someone.

Why is this so pervasive? Because you can be anonymous. Isn't it ironic that one can publicly humiliate someone while hiding behind their computer? It's really hard to accuse someone of cyberbullying, and, often times, the incident is left unresolved, and the victim is left embarrassed.

So what can I do? As educators, we try our best to teach students core values and ethics within the confines of our profession. We try to teach students how they must treat others in order to be successful and productive citizens. We have special mediation and conflict resolution programs for people to talk with each other. We have highly skilled counselors ready and willing to help resolve any conflict at any time. We block certain websites, we put policy in place, we focus on instruction, and we never ignore bullying. But is this enough?