By Alyssa Walker
Amp writer
The school bell rings. You enter the hallway, and suddenly someone walks up and shoves you, knocking your books out of your hand. When you reach down, the bully turns around, laughs and calls you a crude name.
This has been happening for weeks now. Should you tell someone?
Clayton Korb, a Jefferson Middle School sixth-grader, faced this question after bullies attacked him.
"They threw my bike seat in the sewer, and then they threw my bike into the tree," he said. "I didn't say anything mean to them, because I was trying to get them to stop, but they wouldn't listen to me. They just kept doing it."
Unlike some bullied kids, Clayton told someone - a neighbor who helped him confront the bullies.
"He made them get my seat out of the sewer, and two other kids helped me get my bike out of the tree," Clayton said.
Courtney Hooker, now 23, experienced bullying when she was in sixth grade. Courtney had a group of friends that she had hung out with since elementary school. One day, they decided they were not going to be her friends anymore.
"They would break into my locker, steal my homework, and shove me in the hallway," Courtney said. "They also ruined every friendship I tried to make after the incident."
One memory in particular sums up Courtney's sixth-grade experience.
"They were sitting in front of the classroom, and I was sitting in the back of the room. They screamed out in the middle of class, 'Courtney isn't here today, Hooray!' and the teacher didn't do anything about it.
"I spent most of my sixth-grade year in tears," she said.
By seventh grade, Courtney couldn't handle it anymore. She switched schools.
Experts agree that the best way to deal with bullying is to tell someone what is going on.
"Talk to a teacher, a friend, a parent, anyone. Don't keep it in," said Jefferson Middle School resource officer Mike Wehrli.
Assistant principal Scott Swift said the school has mailboxes in which students can leave anonymous notes to tell school authorities about bullying.
Every quarter, one or two students come to Swift to tell him that someone has threatened to beat them up.
"Not a lot of physical fights, but about three to five true fights, but it's mainly verbal," he said.
Swift said he takes a step-by-step approach when dealing with bullying.
"I would get the details - find out if it is physical, verbal, or electronic, who is doing it and where," he said.
At Jefferson, Wehrli said, physical bullying or a face-to-face threat can result in assault charges.
Laurie Juergensen, assistant principal at St. Charles West High School, said her administration does not tolerate bullying.
"If a student comes to us and says up front that they're being bullied, we'll take care of it," she said. "We try our best to put a stop to it."
Jessica Chowning, a 15-year old St. Charles West 10th-grader, said that bullies abuse others to avoid dealing with their own problems.
"They need to feel something other than pain," she said. "They turn it onto others so that they can fill up the empty space inside them."
To report threats against students, teachers or schools, call the Missouri School Violence Hotline at 1-866-748-7047.
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*hugs you*
thanks hun!