Bullying - Will you help me stop it?

Hi. My name is Inês and I am 21 years old. Throughout my academic path, I have played many roles. But bullying was always there.

In my primary school, I felt popular and comfortable in my class. Everyone respected me and invited me to their birthday parties (that was the best way to check if you were popular, back then). However, I didn’t respect everyone in my class. As I felt strong and confident, I didn’t understand why a colleague of mine wasn’t. In my ignorance, I believe that picking on him and making jokes about his different ways of doing things would eventually make him more “normal”. Many people tried to make me stop and understand that he was hurt by my words, but I simple didn’t want to – I was the typical bully.

Years past and I had to change schools. I entered a class where I didn’t know anyone, many people were already friends or, if not, easily became ones. However, I didn’t fit in. I felt very different from them and couldn’t become part of the group, so I kept moving further apart. In those years, I was the one excluded and picked on – I was now the target. Then, I was able to understand what my former colleague felt. And I didn’t know what to do about it.

Eventually, I found a way to adapt to my class and have some amazing friends, which accompanied me to a new school. There, I felt strong again, but my attitude was different. That was the time when I started seeing that some of my colleagues were also treated very badly by others: they were prevented from speaking in the class because they were homosexual; they were spit on because they were weaker; they were consistently mocked just because they liked different things; sometimes the bullies even threw sticks at them. Everything was an excuse to make them feel worse and worse. Then, I felt like I had to do something, so I tried to protect them and fight back – I was trying to be their ally. But many times that would make me the target also, so I felt scared – I became one of the many bystanders, who did nothing to stop it.

I must say I feel very lucky because I was never severely harassed and I don’t have any trauma because of my school years. However, I can’t say that about many of my colleagues, who now continue to be victims where they study or work, who have no self-confidence and are unable to reach their full potential because of all the suffering they had while growing up. Some are even be trapped in a deep depression, which I hope doesn’t evolve to something even more serious.

I saw all of these situations in what I consider very good schools, where many teachers supported us and where we had good learning conditions. Imagine what students see in those schools where teachers are overloaded, don’t have a clue on how to deal with this situations and even doubt if they are safe when they enter the school. We already know what they see, because sometimes the truth comes out and the media report one more suicide or on more brutal aggression recorded and posted online.

Despite all that, I continue listening adults saying that “bullying is just part of growing up”, that “it is just kids playing with each other” or that “there is nothing we can do about it”. Well, I believe that is not true. And, in fact, this attitude is what makes bullying grow in our schools.

To change that, the company I work for, Bright Concept, has decided to invest in a strategic partnership with No Bully, an American non-profit, which has developed for 12 years a program that leverages students’ empathy to stop bullying. We went to San Francisco especially to become certified to facilitate what they call “Solution Coach Training”, in which we train teachers to help students find their own solutions to stop the bullying in their classes. It was an inspiring and effective experience that taught me a lot of important lessons.

Now, I’m searching for schools, companies or organizations in Portugal that want to partner with us to address this problem that affects 1/3 of the Portuguese students.

My dream is to make Portugal the 1st country without school bullying. It’s a long way to go, but we will find the right people to help us in this journey!

If you also feel like this is a problem that needs to be solved, contact me to ines.andrade@brightconcept. Let’s stop bullying together!

See you soon, 

Inês Freire de Andrade