Breaking Down Bullying
As a middle-school student in her brick-and-mortar district, Katelyn Schnell’s world was starting to crumble.
Every day, she endured verbal torment from her classmates. Horrible names and merciless insults were hurled her way. By the time she reached eighth grade, the emotional pain inside began to manifest itself on the outside. In an even darker turn of events, the young girl had begun to harm herself. “I think that was my point where everything was really going downhill,” she said. Schnell found herself fleeing from class on numerous occasions after other students threatened her, she said. “Girls were literally threatening my life and when I told the teacher about it, she said I could wait until after class to go to the principal’s office,” Schnell recounted. The teacher went on to inform Schnell that if she left class early, the principal would be notified she had skipped out of class early. The only attention the student would get is a reprimand. “The only thing the principal had to say was kids are cruel, get over it,” Schnell recalled. “They’re supposed to be there to protect you, and I can’t say I ever felt safe in school.” “When I was sent to the principal, I would always be the one who got into trouble,” she added. “I would talk to the counselor, but he would have nothing to say and send me back to class. That’s the one person in the school you’re supposed to tell anything to and he ignored me just as much as the rest of them,” she said. Her education continued to slip, bombarded by the surrounding cruelty of students and indifference of the adults at school, she said. Her grades sank fast. “I was just worried about what I looked like, what people thought about me,” she said. “I fell behind at school, because I always had my guard up.” “I came home countless times with tears in my eyes,” she added. “When I would get off the bus, people would throw things at me from the bus and laugh at me.” In ninth grade, Schnell escaped to ECOT. And that’s when her life took a sudden 180 degree turn. Not a single student at the new school made fun of her. She heard no cold-hearted taunts about her weight or looks. She described her ECOT teachers as “amazing.” Her grades began to climb as well. And this past October, she officially graduated from high school ahead of schedule with a B- GPA. “It was a lot easier for me to get an education at ECOT,” she said. Emma Baucher, assistant director of counseling, said teachers and administrators do not tolerate bullying. Policies are in place to confront bullies and problems head-on. Teachers are also required to take a course on cyberbullying, which is defined as one person tormenting others through a computer. “If students fe ??????????????????????????????????????????????????????%????????e???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????t? ???????????????????????????????????????????????????
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