Common Themes in the Bullying Stories

Here are some of the things that I noticed came up a lot in the bullying stories:
1. One of the things that I noticed occurring the most, at least in my stories, was 'secretive bullying,' which was not the in-your-face, confrontational harassment but behind the back. Sometimes it was spreading rumors, other times it was just talking about kids.

2. Another thing was that teachers aren't usually aware that bullying is going on. What a lot of kids said is that they think that teachers could help reduce bullying but mostly they are oblivious to the fact that it is going on. The one teacher that I interviewed said, 'kids are smart,' that they knew when the teacher wasn't looking or bullied in ways that they could get away with it.

3. The third thing was that students know who and who is not being bullied. They also know who does that bullying. Pretty much, if you went up to any kid and asked them who in their grade was being picked on, they could tell you.

4. The fourth thing was that there were usually some things that students who were picked on had in common, often they were odd balls, they stuck out in some way that did not scare people, but made them more vulnerable. For example, they always wore mismatching clothes and were, a lot of times, not the most attractive people.

5. The fifth thing that I noticed was that bullies tend to get satisfaction out of it. They do it because it either them feel powerful and like they have a sort of control.

6. I also noticed that students referred to differences as a cause for bullying. That others would bully because of something that stuck out about that kid. In the suburbs, where there was not a lot of racial diversity, it was skin color and in the city sometimes it was clothes or the way someone talked.

Things that I noticed that I had not thought about before:
1. One thing was that I knew that there was behind the back stuff, kids get talked about, etc., but I had never thought of it as 'secretive bullying,' so it surprised me that a number of kids all referred to it as that.

2. Something else that I hadn't really thought about but that I noticed as I did more interviews was that the kids who are bullied by teachers are not the same kids that are bullied by students. The students that teachers harassed were not harassed by other students. Teachers were nicer to the students who were bullied by other students. It wasn't the bullies who were bullied by the teachers either. I could see things in common with the kids bullied by kids but not with the kids bullied by teachers.