ARE YOU BEING BULLIED?
Raven
Thursday night, doing my social studies homework on my family’s computer. My brain needed a break, so I decided to send an e-mail to my friend Lasa to see what was up. When I opened my messages, I noticed that I had an e-mail from someone named “Guess Who?” I thought it was Lasa sending me a funny note, so I opened the email.
Guess what? The e-mail was definitely not from Lasa. Here’s what it said.
“Hey, Raven. You are so lame. Everyone in school hates you. You think you’re better than everyone else, but you’re not. You wear ugly clothes and you have stupid looking glasses. Do you think you’re smart? Well you’re not! I saw you cheat on the math test last week and I’m going to tell everyone.”
Pretty bad, huh? I felt sick to my stomach. In about 10 seconds, a million thoughts ran through my head....like, “Who would say these mean things? I do not think I’m better than everyone else! I would never cheat! Why would someone say that I did? Do kids at school really hate me?”
I must have looked pretty shocked, because my Mom, who was doing the dishes in the kitchen, asked me, “Raven, what’s wrong? You look like someone just kicked you in the stomach? Are you feeling OK?”
I said, “Nothing. I’m fine.” But I guess I wasn’t very believable because my Mom got a worried look on her face and came over to the computer.
I thought about hiding the e-mail from her. My Mom is pretty smart, so I decided I’d better tell her. I showed her the note.
After she read it, she looked shocked. “What horrible things to say! Who sent this to you, Raven?”
I told her, “I don’t know, but maybe I should send a note back to see if I can find out, or at least to tell them to cut it out.”
My Mom said it probably would be best not to send a note back. She thought this might make things even worse. Here’s what we did instead. First, we saved the e-mail and also printed it out so that we will have this as evidence if we need it later on. We also blocked the sender from my e-mail account so that they can’t send more e-mails to me.
Because the person who sent the note was probably someone at my school, my Mom and I set up a meeting with my math teacher and guidance counselor to tell them what happened. I was really nervous about this. I mean, what if my math teacher didn’t believe me and thought I cheated? What if they told everyone at school what happened and made everything worse?
It turned out that the teacher and counselor were really nice. They were upset about the e-mail and said that there had been other students at school who had been cyberbullied. They said they would send a report to the principal and would watch out for me. The teacher and counselor told me to be sure to talk with them again if I have any problems with bullying.
This week all of the teachers in my school talked about cyberbullying in class meetings with students. None of the teachers talked about me or my e-mail problem specifically (which was good). But, they reminded everyone about the school’s rules against bullying, and they talked about how cyberbullying was really serious.
Well, it’s now a week later. Thinking about the e-mail still makes me kind of upset. The good news is that I haven’t gotten any more mean e-mails. I told a couple of my good friends—Lasa and Josh—about what happened. They were really upset for me.
If I get any more e-mails, I’ll be sure to tell my Mom and my teacher or guidance counselor. I wasn’t sure they could help, but they really did.
