A lesson about bullying

Yes, this week I started my first "internship" as a high school teacher, For five weeks I am going to make lessons and hopefully teach the students something. So today I was going to work on one of my assignments for next week but unfortunately I got stuck on Youtube instead. Maybe because I realized that there are so many good videos out there that you can use in the classroom as a way to make the subjects a little bit more interesting.

Anyhow, I was watching "Teens React" and one episode is about Bullying and the video made by Amanda Todd. Maybe you don't know her? Amanda Todd is a girl that made a mistake in 7th grade that hunted her for years, she was bullied and got sick and depressed. She made a video that she and told here story through notes for the whole world to see. she wrote about being followed by the bullying, trying to commit suicide and hurting herself. About a month after posting the video online she did committed suicide and the video got a lot of views.

This got me thinking. I would really liked to talk about this in class someday. Bullying is important to talk about as a way to defeat it and I would want my students to get active to prevent it. So instead of making the lesson I had to work on I made one about bullying instead. I am going to share these with all of you and I would get really happy if you used the idea!

Bullying

Video: Amanda Todd - My Story 

Intro: Start with asking the kids if they know about Amanda Todd and her video on Youtube, just as a way to start up. If no one knows her just let it be with saying that you are going to show them the video. If someone do knows just say good and show them the  video as a way to refresh there memory. 

After the video is done you hopefully can get some different reactions from the students. Maybe someone feels sad and maybe a couple of them don’t really know why this is something you show them. Now is a good time to ask them “what did you think?”. After some short answers you can inform them that one of the reasons this video has so many views on Youtube is because the girl really did committed suicide about a month after the video was posted online. This will hopefully get there attention and they are ready to discuss.

Questions to ask:

•  Why do you think she posted this video?
•   What do you think about the “friends” that followed her with their bullying? Were they really hoping for her to end her life?
• Could anyone have prevented this?
•  Why didn’t anyone do something?
•  Why do you thing that a lot of people online post comments to the video saying: “she deserved it” and “she was the one that made mistakes and killed herself”?
• Why did the video get so much attention?
• Can you see tendencies to this kind of bullying in your life? 
• what would you do if it happened to you? how would you feel?
•  What can you do about bullying?

After this you can make a follow up assignment for this class. Maybe you ask them to make something to show that they care about people, like writing a text themselves or together, they can make their own video and post online, find out information about who you can contact if someone is getting bullied or anything other just to spread the word. That way they get the inspiration to do something creative and at the same time learn something about bullying.Of course you can get a spin on the lesson just to make it fit the subject that you are teaching, a video or a text can be a language-assignment and not just about bullying.