I wanted to find examples about older people being victims of cyber bullies and what I found was very shocking and not what I expected at all.
This article from www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat by Nomia Iqbal shares a story from a teacher who quit her job and become clinically depressed because of things students were posting about her on Facebook and Twitter. In the article the teacher shares some of the awful things that students posted on her Facebook and how they used previous tweets from her twitter to make up stories. The worst part is when she went to other teachers they did nothing, they told her to "toughen up" and not to let things get to her. In the end she was going to get investigated because of the things students wrote about her and quit before that happened.
This story is very scary for many reasons by mainly because she received no help from any teacher or administrators. I think that is an indicator that nothing is being done about cyber bullying in that particular district on any level if not even a teacher can get help. It all has to start with the teachers and the students see them as examples and it's really disgusting that, that district didn't stand up for this teacher and help her out.
Stories like this make me want to cut off social media all together once I get a teaching job because it's really not worth the trouble that people go through.
I couldn't agree with you more that it is disgusting that the district or her co-workers didn't stand up for the teacher. What kind of learning community of teachers is that? And how are any of those teachers or administration members setting an example for the students of their school? By them sitting back and letting this abuse toward the teacher happening they are saying it is okay to bully.
ReplyDeleteI couldn't image if I was stuck in this situation as a future teacher, and it does make me want to forget about all social networking. But, how were these students finding her twitter and facebook? Wasn't she private?
This was very interesting and thank you for bringing this to my attention!