Dr. Phil,
As a formal educator, I have discovered that the bullying issue is at times falls on the teacher. Too many times the teacher's (they too target students) just give the bullying child a pat on the back of the hand by simply saying,"don't do it any more" then walks away. The administrators inform teachers to handle the situations if at all possible. Then again there are assistant administrators, who have covered the tracks of the bullying from the students and teachers because, they don't want anything to leak out and have the public feel that THEIR school isn't safe. To suspend a student (and far be it to suspend a teacher WITH pay) only gives the bullier free time from attending school. He/she goes back to school, to do it all over again. The teachers need to immediatly inform the parents of the bullying child and get to the issues, and TRY to their best ability to develop asolution to the bullying itself. The teacher also needs to properly tend to the child who IS and has been targeted and talk with those parents as well. Teachers also need to stop depending on the students to tell them "what happened", simply the students themselves lie against someone they do not like. Schools are getting too dangerous to let this go unattended. I would like to add that the bullying is happening as early as pre-kindergarten. This is NOT a situation to be taken lightly. Each school has it's own administrators and they need to stop being slack on this so very serious issue and take the situation into their OWN hands instead of the hands of others.
