My brother was a shrimp in high school. On the first day of his sophomore year, he and his motorcycle helmet were given a “whirlpool”: his head (and his helmet, separately, I might add) were submerged in the toilet in the boys’ RR and consequently “swallowed.” they threw”. It was a humiliating experience for him. Why did they target it?

As her younger sister, I’m sure I judged her dunk well deserved at the time. I mean, just her getting out of bed that morning and giving me her morning sinus breath across the kitchen table would have been cause for death by firing squad, okay?

In hindsight, however, I acknowledge that my brother received an unintentional hair wash because he was different. I can also attest to my own discomfort and “difference” in school. And I can testify to this fact: being bullied sucks.

When I was in high school, a bunch of pretty cheerleaders walked past me in the hallway, and one of them spat a very unpretty loogie, a snot ball, right into my hair. I didn’t realize she had actually landed on me until one of my friends recoiled in horror from the back of my head. Gross!

What did I do to them? Um, sort of EXIST was what I did to annoy you guys. I was one of those quirky kids on the sidelines. For some reason, people like us piss off the popular kids and inspire them to call us names… like “cockroach.”

I think it’s experiences like the ones my brother and I went through that inspired me to become a high school teacher. Since my first day of teaching, I have had a no hazing policy in my classroom. This is an exception to my standard first-day-of-school speech, which I’ve given, without fail, for ten years. It serves two purposes: (1) it makes clear my intolerance of bullying behavior in my classroom, and (2) it cements in the minds of my students this thought: “Oh my gosh. My English teacher is crazy. This year could be very interesting.”

“How many of you have seen the movie, ‘The Matrix’? Yeah? Great. Raise your hand if you remember the scene where Keneau Reeves gets angry and towers over everyone else and flies into the air. Awesome scene, right?

Well, my classroom is a safe and supportive place to be. It’s okay to make mistakes here. Close your eyes and imagine that we are reading aloud here one day and someone says a word wrong. I understand? Okay, now open your eyes and look at me. I want you to imagine what it will be like if you make fun of someone else, when I soar over all of your desks, do three somersaults in the air, land on your desk, and land on your face.”

[At this point, someone inevitably asks me, “Can you really do that?”

And I respond, “Well, you REALLY don’t want to find out, do you? Because, trust me, you will need years of therapy to recover from the sight of ME doing that to YOU.”]

[I should also point out that at this juncture in the conversation, someone smarter than the questioner elbows him, shakes his head, and rolls his eyes at the stupidity of the question…]

Now let me pause here and tell you that this hyperbolic warning against bullying in my bedroom was MUCH more effective when I was 225 pounds and only 5’3″ tall. At the time, the idea of ​​roly-poly me flying by the air was much more comical.Since I lost a hundred pounds and started running…not so much.

I follow that little fantasy with, “But seriously, folks…if you treat others with disrespect in my classroom, I’ll ask you to stop. I’ll point out that your behavior is unacceptable.” If that doesn’t work, I’m going to call your parents on the phone RIGHT NOW, from my classroom, and I’m going to explain that your behavior is upsetting me and everyone here.”

At this point someone, usually a know-it-all, says something like, “You can’t call my parents at work” or “We don’t have a phone,” something like that. THAT’S when I ask them if they think a truly sane person would claim to be able to fly through the air, Matrix-style… you can guess the “guy with no phone” replies “No.”

So I say, “I’m crazy enough to go to your house, knock on your door, and ASK your parents WHY they’re raising such a hateful child. Do you really want to see if I do that?”

For the most part, since I let kids know (with a sense of humor) on day one that bullying is not okay, I generally don’t have that problem in my classroom. The little instances of disrespect run into “Dude, she’ll make you The Matrix if you don’t let it.” I also let the kids know that if they are bullied outside of my class, they can also come to me in private and I will do what I can to stop it.

I’m not saying it always works, and if gentle reminders of my expectations in the classroom don’t work, and contacting parents doesn’t work, then it becomes an administrative problem. In other words, I call out the big shots, because there’s no two ways about it: bullying sucks. Not well. It is not a rite of initiation. All children deserve to have a reasonable expectation to come to school and feel safe and supported. Period.