The Blue Folder : Are you Aware?
Bullying. Everyone goes through it whether it is verbal or physical abuse. We all get intimidated by that one person or even a group of people who try to persuade an action upon oneself. At a young age we are taught by our counselors to always be aware of the misbehavior, but in some scenarios when action needs to be applied many faculty choose to ignore the emotional affect that is taking place of the young adolescents. When action isn’t applied there is a continuous battle within not only the victim but as well as the abuser.
According to Dan Olweus of the National School Safety Center, American schools harbor approximately 2.1 million bullies and 2.7 million of their victims. This high number of abuse is due to the fact that there is a lack of attention from teachers to students. Allowing this kind of behavior affects the attacker and the receiver in many ways. If the attacker persists then later in their future they will take that dominance into adulthood and have a big impact in trying to build positive relationships, as wells as the abuse of drugs and alcohol. If the victim continues to be mistreated then they will fall into depression and low self esteem costing them a negative outcome in their professional and personal lives.
An anonymous scholar in 7th grade at LPCA has experienced a situation where there should have been more of an awareness. “There was a girl in 6th grade that was very disruptive and was nasty to the point where she had a bad influence on other scholars. The teachers never did anything but continued to allow her to act up,” says the scholar. With that in mind there should be more of an enforcement on educating our faculty about how to handle situations like this and have stop for misbehaving students.
The Blue Folder is a guide for staff to use when discipline needs to be applied. It is formated into five steps. This folder has been the backbone of control with misguided scholars. Many teachers and principals all have a version that is different in many ways, some completely ignoring it.
“I think it’s important to document and have that and go through the steps, just to kind of remind us where we are at so we can see if there's a pattern there,” says LPCA Kindergarten teacher, Ms. Garcia. Younger grade level teachers start with multiple warnings and leave it at that compared to other teachers who follow the five step operation and have positive outcomes to provide authority between the teacher and scholar. “The blue folder is a resource that I can look back to just in case a student does not want to behave well and do not pay attention to what I’m trying to control. It is provided with a lot of research, so that help me, help the other student,” says Garcia.
Many bullies know how to get into the minds of these innocent victims. One LPCA 4th grader shares her experience with this kind of behavior. “He got on my nerves so much that he made me scream. Now he uses these names against me and the next day he made me do it again.”
Changes in authority has brought more attention into the lives of scholars. There has been more disciplinary action this new school year. “With our new principal you can feel more responsibility taking as to comparison to our past two principles we had in the past.There’s going to be more attention for the scholars as well as the teachers,” says one student. If we continue this remarkable change we can be a change in school societies.
