Wellington Heights Secondary School

Today is the start of Bullying Prevention Awareness Week. Our school is raising awareness of bullying prevention and teaching students how to respond effectively to bullying situations.  Bullying can take many forms. It can be physical, and it also can be emotional and social—using words to hurt someone, leaving someone out, or gossiping and spreading rumours. Bullying also happens over cell phones and the Internet.  There will be times when you are at school when you will not get along with someone. Having a conflict, disagreement or argument with someone is normal. It is important to remember that there is a difference between teasing and bullying. When you tease someone it usually only happens once or twice, but bullying is repeated behaviour; that means it happens over and over again. Bullying is done on purpose to hurt someone’s feelings and the child that is bullied feels scared, sad and sometimes angry while the child that bullied does not. With teasing or joking it will still hurt your feelings, but the behaviour happens in the heat of the moment and both sides feel bad after. If we all understand what bullying is and can recognize it when it is happening, we can all find ways to help when we see bullying.