Picture this: Nick sees a cute girl downstairs by the lockers. He thinks that he can impress her if he jumps over the stair rail from the upstairs landing to the commons below.

Not impressive, Nick, when the paramedics have to haul you to the clinic for a cast.

My first instinct is to ask Nick, “Why did you do this? Why did you think this was a good idea?”

The why is not productive. It’s likely that Nick doesn’t remember why he thought it was a smart thing to do, now that he can’t play baseball this spring.

Students misbehave or make poor choices for many reasons:

• Desire to impress someone
• Not enough sleep
• Trouble or conflict with another student
• Girlfriend problems
• Boyfriend problems
• The lesson isn’t difficult enough
• The lesson is too challenging
• The lesson doesn’t seem relevant to life or goals
• It’s the week before spring/summer/winter/Thanksgiving break
• It’s Homecoming week, the night of the big game, the day before the dance
• Feeling threatened or embarrassed
• Headache, stomach ache, hunger
• Rebelling against authority
• Home life is troubled

The why really isn’t important when it comes to a solution. Often discussing the why with a student can make her feel cornered. The teen tries to justify something that isn’t justifiable and becomes defensive. The why then becomes a power struggle.

It’s more productive to ask the what questions.

• What happened?
• What should have happened?
• What can you do to fix it?
• What do you think would be an appropriate consequence?

The answers to these what questions are factual, not accusatory. They lead to solutions, not power struggles. Best of all, the student learns what behavior would have been appropriate in the situation.

The why? Well, I can tell you why the behavior happened without even asking the student. Teens are impulsive. It’s part of their charm.

As teachers we know that the schoolhouse gate doesn’t serve as a barrier to information from the real world. The sexual text messages and instant messages (sexting) our teens send to one another during their online evenings can create a lot of trouble during the offline school day.

But these cyberbullying events take place off school grounds. Really, should teachers get involved in this sexting mess? What can we do about sexting, anyway?

The case for intervention. In their book, Bullying Beyond the Schoolyard: Preventing and Responding to Cyberbullying, Sameer Hinduja and Justin Patchin make the case that teachers are in the best position to help students with cyberbullying issues. Many students spend more time with their teachers than they do with their parents, the authors write. Teachers see students interact with one another every day and might pick up on unusual behavior or a subtle cue that something is wrong with a student.

Hinduja and Patchin write that adults who are aware of teen sexual harassment, but fail to respond, can be held liable for not assisting the teen, even if the event takes place off campus.

Students who circulate sexting messages or other forms of cyberbullying can’t limit their messages’ reach or timing. Teens who check their cell phones during a school break or lunch can find a surprise sexting video waiting for them in their InBox. If the video is of someone the teens know, the whole school day can be disrupted.

The important legal principal to guide teachers and other school officials, the authors write, is this: School officials cannot discipline students for off-campus speech or behavior with which they simply do not agree unless the school environment is significantly affected.

Media as sexual exploration. Teens are curious about their bodies. They’re curious about one another’s bodies, too. This generation of kids didn’t invent sexual exploration, but they have many more ways to explore and share.

That’s both a problem and a benefit of digital media, the authors of “Sex, Sexuality, Sexting, and SexEd: Adolescents and the Media” wrote. Among gay and lesbian youth, online media give the teens a safe outlet to explore their sexuality in a way that they can’t offline.

“On the Internet, GLBT youth discuss a variety of sexual identities and queer politics, as well as seek partners, navigate the coming out process, and frankly discuss sexual practices, including safer sex,” the authors wrote.

However, teens who post or send sexting messages can also give the wrong idea about sharing sexual content. The authors wrote that teens who see risky sexual behavior online with no consequences are more likely to experiment with the risky acts. Girls who send sexting photos practice self-objectification.

The biggest worry, the authors wrote, is that teens whose sexual images appear online or in text messages have an increased risk of victimization.

Health information and the Internet. Research shows that 44 percent of teens turn to the Internet for health information, and one-quarter or more of them research sexually transmitted diseases, sex, and pregnancy. One study found that 41 percent of teens who researched a health issue online changed their behavior because of the information they’d found. The Internet can be a great place to discover answers to life’s embarrassing or awkward questions.

The problem is that they’re not sophisticated Internet searchers. They judge a site not by the site’s authors, but how slick the design is. If the site looks professional, most teens think, then it’s credible.

Some teens also don’t have the vocabulary to search the Internet for credible sexual information. Instead of using anatomical names, they search with slang terms. Of course, these teens find sexually explicit sites, the “Sex, Sexuality, Sexting, and SexEd” authors wrote. Teens who are exposed to sexually explicit images are more likely to become sexually active at an earlier age than their peers.

What teachers can do. Kids are always going to be interested in their bodies. Cell phones and the Internet aren’t going away any time soon. Inappropriate photos have been around since the invention of the camera. So how can we prevent the spread of sexting messages?

• Educate students about how to assess the credibility of Web sites
• Offer teens appropriate Web sites and vocabulary in health classes
• Encourage students to visit their privacy settings on social network sites to make sure that their privacy is protected
• Review the district rules about cyberbullying with students and make sure they understand the consequences of their actions
• Invite students to come to you privately with questions or concerns about sexting or cyberbullying
• Give students guidelines about posting images online and over cellphones
• Hold parent meetings to discuss cyberbullying and sexting

MTV has a program called A Thin Line, which is trying to stop digital abuse, Amanda Paulson wrote in The Christian Science Monitor. Parry Aftab is the executive director of WiredSafety and an adviser to A Thin Line. Aftab says that teens rarely think about the consequences of their actions. They look at sexting as a safe alternative to sex.

Paulson quoted Aftab: I tell kids the five P’s. If you don’t want your parents, your principal, a predator, the police, or your potential coach, college recruiter, or boss to see it, don’t post it publicly.

References:

Brown, J., Keller, S., and Stern, S. (2009.) Sex, Sexuality, Sexting, and SexEd: Adolescents and the Media. The Prevention Researcher. 16:4, 12-16.

Hinduja, S. and Patchin, J. (2009.) Bullying Beyond the Schoolyard: Preventing and Responding to Cyberbullying. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Corwin Press.

Lenhart, A. (2009) Teens and Sexting: How and why minor teens are sending sexually suggestive nude or nearly nude images via text messaging. Pew Internet & American Life Project. http://www.pewinternet.org/~/media//Files/Reports/2009/PIP_Teens_and_Sexting.pdf Accessed 2/1/10

Paulson, A. (2009.) Sexting: at least 15 percent of teens take part. Christian Science Monitor. 12/16/2009, p1.

According to the Norton Online Living Report 2009, parents believe their children spend 21 hours online. The reality is that students in twelve countries reported spending 39 hours online. Don’t tell me these kids don’t have time to finish their assignments or clean their rooms.

Multitasking. Researchers for the Kaiser Family Foundation’s report, Generation M2: Media in the Lives of 8- to 18-Year-Olds, found that our students aren’t just watching YouTube or downloading from iTunes. When they’re on the ’Net, they’re likely to be IM-ing, texting, watching TV, or listening to their music players.

The Kaiser Family Foundation’s researchers found that rates of teen media use (TV, cell phones, computers, video games, audio, print, and movies) are up an hour and 17 minutes over teen media usage five years ago. A teen’s cell phone, smart phone, or gaming device is never out of arm’s reach.

“[…] cell phones and iPods have become true multi-media devices,” the study’s authors wrote. “In fact, young people now spend more time listening to music, playing games, and watching TV on their cell phones (a total of :49 daily) than they spend talking on them (:33).”

The authors of the Norton Online Living Report found that, “[…] six in 10 adults worldwide say kids spend ‘too much’ time online, and what’s more 45% of kids agree.”

Students as digital trailblazers. In another study from the Speak Up National Research Project, researchers disagree with parents and kids: students aren’t spending too much time online; students are the early adopters and adapters of new technology. Our students are not wasting time, they’re innovating. The authors write that our students are the “digital advance team,” the people who will lead educators and other adults into the technology age.

“The findings illustrate how K-12 students are leading the way in re-thinking education delivery and career exploration,” the study’s authors wrote. “These insights can be used to inform our nation’s education leaders in communities all across the United States, as they plan on how to use the stimulus funds for education effectively.”

The researchers believe that our students are ready and able to show adults how to use technology in innovative and educational ways; it’s our responsibility to take notes and make the kids’ 21st century technology ideas happen.

Online use and academic success. The problem is that when kids are online, they’re not likely to be doing school work. The Generation M2 report’s researchers found that students from all races and from all family education backgrounds spent an average of just 16 minutes online working on classroom assignments. Most of the time (25%), they hang out on social network sites, play online games (19%), watch YouTube or other videos (16%), and IM one another (13%).

The good news from these studies is that all of this online time and short hand text message language isn’t rotting students’ brains as much as we might think. The Generation M2 report’s researchers did find that 8- to 18-year-olds are spending five fewer minutes reading hard copies of books, magazines, and newspapers for pleasure than they did in six years ago. However, they’ve made up about two minutes of that deficit with online magazine or newspaper reading.

They also found that the same number of students who read for pleasure six years ago is about the same number who do so today. It’s also an activity that prohibits a lot of multitasking. Students might glance at the TV or play music in the background, but for the most part, when they read print, they are focused on their reading.

The Generation M2 report’s researchers also found that the time students spend online doesn’t affect their reading time. Heavy screen media users (16 or more hours a day) and light screen media users (less than two hours a day) read about the same amount of time: about 41 minutes a day. Even kids who watch TV all night long read about as much as those who don’t tune in much at all.

Students who have a TV in their bedrooms or live in homes where the TV is always on read less than other students, by about 10 minutes. Ten minutes might not seem much, but it’s a significant number that correlates to classroom achievement.

“Contrary to what is found for other media,” the Generation M2 report’s researchers wrote, “young people who are heavy readers (those who spend an hour or more per day with print media) are substantially more likely to say they earn high grades than those who are light readers (those who report no print reading on a typical day): 72% of heavy readers report high grades, compared to 60% of those in the light-reading group.”

Media use and well being. Not only do the heavy media users earn lower grades, but they’re not as happy as the kids who are offline. Of the light media users (fewer than three hours per day), 22% reported that they have a “high level of personal contentment,” the Generation M2 researchers found. On the opposite side, 20% of the heavy media users (more than 16 hours per day) reported that they had a “low level of personal contentment.”

Twenty-one percent of 8- to 18-year-olds are heavy media users. The problem is that we need to teach these kids to channel their media use. According to the Norton Online Living Report’s authors, parents know that they’re responsible for their children’s media use, but just 7 in 10 kids have rules. Thirty-three percent of the parents in the survey said that it’s hard to make media rules because so much new technology wasn’t around when they were kids.

The Norton Online Living Report researchers found that one in five students admitted they did something online that their parents wouldn’t approve. One-in-five students reported that their parents caught them, too.

“Supervision is inherently difficult when it comes to the online world,” the study’s authors wrote. “Not only is the Web’s content available to anyone with a search engine, it’s easy for kids to bypass parents altogether by logging on from outside the household.”

Educators have the tough job of balancing the curriculum with the students’ digital obsession, of incorporating 21st century skills with 21st century safety, and encouraging academic success in a world of media excess. I think we’re up to the challenge, but our role will be more to guide the digital natives with their technology use while they lead the way.

References:

“Generation M2: Media in the Lives of 8- to 18-Year Olds.” (2010) Kaiser Family Foundation. http://www.kff.org/entmedia/upload/8010.pdf Accessed January 26, 2010

“Norton Online Living Report.” (2009) Symantec Corporation. http://www.nortononlineliving.com/documents/NOLR_Report_09.pdf Accessed January 21, 2010.

“Selected National Findings: Speak Up 2008 for Students, Teachers, Parents and Administrators.” (2009.) Project Tomorrow. http://www.tomorrow.org Accessed December 8, 2009.

Ever since beginning my research on social aggression, teachers often have asked me what they should do to help students cope with the ill effects of social aggression. I often have been at a loss for words when faced with this question, given that little research has been conducted in order to verify effective strategies that teachers can use inside or outside of their classrooms. As a result, my most recent research has involved designing and testing a method that includes three activities intended to help girls both talk about and cope with their emotions surrounding social aggression (Willer, 2009). The three activities are based in the fields of narrative psychology and therapy and involve helping girls cope through storytelling, art, and metaphor.¹

The first step in helping girls cope is to encourage them to tell their stories of social aggression. Pennebaker’s (1997) research suggests that communicating about stressful events is an effective sense-making process that helps reduce emotional and intrusive thoughts, and therefore, negative emotional outcomes. In other words, when girls experience social aggression, they are apt to ruminate about what has occurred, why it happened, and the impact it will have on their relationships. Such continuous and intrusive thinking can contribute to negative health outcomes. Giving language to their thoughts and feelings through storytelling, however, is an effective means of engaging in catharsis, gaining insight into what happened, and feeling a sense of control over what has occurred. Thus, the first activity in the coping method involves teachers allowing students to tell their stories of social aggression.

Teachers should keep in mind that telling these stories may be difficult for their students. Young people may not be developmentally and cognitively advanced enough to productively process stressful experiences such as social aggression and the complex emotions that may result. Therefore, after allowing girls to tell their stories of social aggression, teachers can engage students in two metaphor drawing activities designed to help them productively process their experiences with social aggression. Using metaphor and art can aid in storytelling, especially for children, because they are “ways to visually communicate thoughts and feelings that are too painful to put into words” (Malchiodi, 2003, p. ix).

The first metaphor drawing activity involves encouraging students to externalize social aggression. Therapists use externalization as a sense-making method that focuses on seeing the problem as the problem rather than the person as the problem (White & Epston, 1990). Therefore, the goal of this activity is to have girls draw a metaphor that represents their feelings about their experiences with social aggression. For example, a participant in my study drew a duckling who lost her family to represent how her experience with gossip made her feel all alone. Another girl drew a person who was about to be hit by a car to represent the fear she felt when her peers were excluding her. After students draw metaphors such as these, teachers can encourage them to use their drawings to orally explain and further process their emotions.

The second metaphor drawing activity provides another means for helping girls communicate about and cope with their experiences with social aggression. The purpose of this activity is to help students productively reframe their experience with social aggression by drawing a redemption metaphor (McAdams, Diamond, de St. Aubin, and Mansfield, 1997). This technique is based on research that has found that people who are able to see the redeeming qualities or the bright side of a bad situation tend to be healthier than those individuals who tend to focus on the negative aspects. Therefore, teachers can have students draw a metaphor that represents something positive that came out of the negative experience with social aggression. For example, one participant in my study drew two peas in a pod to represent how she became closer with the girl who was socially aggressive as a result of having to work through their problems. Another girl drew an eagle to represent the freedom she felt when she broke off her friendship with the girl who spread lies about her. Again, teachers can have students use their drawing as a tool to orally communicate and process their feelings.

Social aggression can be debilitating, both socially and emotionally for girls. Through simple communication processes, including storytelling and drawing, however, teachers may be able to offer girls healing and hope.

Erin Willer is an assistant professor in the Department of Human Communication Studies at the University of Denver who has experience as a high school teacher. Her research has been published in the journal Communication Studies and is due to be published next year in Personal Relationships and the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships. Erin also has received Top Four Paper Awards from the Interpersonal Communication Division of the Western States Communication Association.

End note:
¹Although these activities can be effective ways of helping girls communicate about and cope with social aggression, it is important that teachers take precautions before deciding to implement them. Talking about social aggression the classroom can be risky for students. Any given classroom is comprised of both victims and perpetrators, and therefore, teachers need to be careful not to set students up for revictimization.

References

Crick, N. R., & Bigbee, M. A. (1998). Relational and overt forms of peer victimization: A multiinformant approach. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 66, 337-347.

Crick, N. R., & Grotpeter, J. K. (1996). Children’s treatment by peers: Victims of relational and overt aggression. Developmental and Psychopathology, 8, 367-380.

Malchiodi, C. A. (2003). Handbook of art therapy. New York: The Guilford Press.

McAdams, D. P., Diamond, A., de St. Aubin, E., & Mansfield, E. (1997). Stories of commitment: The psychological construction of generative lives. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 72, 678-694.

Paquette, J. A., & Underwood, M. K. (1999). Gender differences in young adolescents’ experiences of peer victimization: Social and physical aggression. Merrill-Palmer Quarterly, 45, 242-266.

Pennebaker, J. W. (1997). Opening up: The healing power of expressing emotions (rev. ed.). New York: Guilford.

White, M., & Epston, D. (1990). Narrative means to therapeutic ends. Adelaide, South Australia: Dulwich Centre.

Willer, E. K. (2009). Experimentally testing a narrative sense-making metaphor intervention: Facilitating communicative coping about social aggression with adolescent girls. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Lincoln.

No one wants this phone call, not you and Brad’s mom. The longer you wait, the worse the situation becomes, though, so don’t postpone parent contact.

Suzanne Tingley, author of Dealing with Difficult Parents, said it’s best to let parents know sooner rather than later that a student is having academic or behavioral problems. “If the student is in trouble, in any way, whether it’s disciplinary or whether it’s academic, you don’t have to wait until parent conferences to let the parents know,” Tingley said in a recent Inside the School online seminar. “If a student is struggling in math or reading, or getting along with people, a call home can help, or at least show parents that you are on top of the situation.”

Locate the parents’ contact information, find a quiet place, and make the call. If you’re calling the parent at work, be careful about the student’s privacy and don’t identify yourself beyond your name and the school’s name to the parent’s colleagues. Ask the working parent if this is a good time to call about a school-related issue. Overall, don’t worry about calling a parent at work; it’s better to call and forewarn the parent of a problem than to let the problem fester.

“At the secondary level, I can tell you from my years in administration, that no parent is as angry as the parent who hears that his or her child is failing a course needed for graduation and it’s too late to do anything about it,” Tingley said. “So I’m not saying that timely information will necessarily correct the problem, but I am saying that it will protect you from the charge that you didn’t tell anybody about it and so the child didn’t have anything that he or she could do about it.”

The purpose of the phone call is not to vent your frustrations, but to work together with the parent to help the student. It’s helpful to write down the specifics of the phone call in advance so you don’t become sidetracked.

“It’s hard to give information to parents that you know that they don’t want to hear,” Tingley said, “but it’s a lot worse if you wait. You never know how parents are going to react to negative information. You don’t know if you’re going see tears or anger, or there might even be threats, but nobody wants to hear that their child is at the bottom of the class, or that she’s a bully, or that she needs to show more respect for the teacher or for other students. But it’s part of the teacher’s job to give feedback, and to give it as honestly as you can.”

Many teachers believe that if they publicly praise a student that is doing very well, it will motivate others to be like that student.

In fact, often the opposite is true.

Most difficult, disruptive, or unmotivated students do not want to be more like the publicly praised student. Instead they say, “Whatever with him or her. He’s always being praised. I don’t care!”

The praised student is often ridiculed by his or her peers and wishes his success was kept private. Instead, privately praise individual students for different things. This way nobody has to worry about feeling embarrassed in front of their peers.

Stop writing names on the board!

Imagine walking into a faculty meeting 20 minutes late. Your principal sees you enter and instead of saying something to you, he writes your “name” on an overhead projector for all to see. Later in the day you go down to the faculty room to get your lunch and the overhead sheet is hanging on the refrigerator door.

You go to your principal’s office and ask him why the name is on the door. He says, “Because everyone needs to know that it is not ok to come to my faculty meetings late! But don’t worry, because if you are on time (or good) the rest of the day I will erase it tomorrow!”

You might be good the rest of the day, but you will also be miserable. Kids respond the same way. They might be good the rest of the day, but you really have not done any long term good.

Reprinted with permission from the Teacher Learning Center, www.TLC-SEMS.com