Prevention for Educators

Why Educators Need To Learn Prevention

Educators must also learn how to protect themselves and others from cyberbullying. With the rise of many social networking sites and the increased usage of the Internet by both students and teachers, many school employees may become victim to cyberbullying.
Cyberbullying can have a serious impact on the health, well-being, and self-confidence of those targeted. It may have a significant impact not only on the person being bullied, but on their home and work life too. Teachers and other educators who become victims of cyberbullying may have their career progression affected, and there have been cases where the person bullied has chosen to leave the education sector altogether. Dealing with incidents quickly and effectively is key to minimizing the harm of potentially stressful situations.

What Employers Can Do To Prevent Cyberbullying of Educators

Protecting staff from cyberbullying is best done within a prevention framework, with whole school policies and practices designed to combat cyberbullying. Each school should have a designated cyberbullying lead, a member of the senior management team tasked with overseeing and managing the recording, investigation and resolution of all bullying incidents.

What Educators Can Do To Prevent Cyberbullying of Themselves

There are several factors that can cause cyberbullying towards teachers, and therefore, are also several steps that a teacher can take to prevent cyberbullying among students. One way to prevent cyberbullying is for teachers to look themselves up at constant intervals. This is because there are many websites online that allow for students and others to rate school employees. This could then start rumors and may hurt a teacher. To look yourself up, go to any search engine (like Google, Bing, Yahoo, AOL, etc.) and look up your own name, nicknames, or any name that students know you as. Many websites will allow for you to report comments and posts if they are inappropriate.
In addition, educators should make sure to separate their personal lives from their work lives. With the ongoing expansion of technology, there have been increasing instances where teachers have mixed their personal lives with their careers, resulting in detrimental effects in their performances as a result of bullying or harassment. Teachers and educators can make a separate account to connect with students, but must know to keep their personal information, pictures, videos, etc… private.
Even if a teacher does not friend or connect his or her students, the teacher should still make sure that all of his or her social networking profiles are private. Many social networking sites allow personal information, as well as pictures and messages to be seen by the public. A teacher should make all efforts to prevent something that can be misinterpreted or something that can be considered unprofessional from being seen by a student.

What Educators Can Do To Prevent Cyberbullying of Students

Educators play a very important and influential role in the lives and morals of students. The job of the educator, in respect to cyberbullying, is to instill a sense of etiquette on the Internet onto students at as young of an age as possible, to prevent the occurrences of cyberbullying in the future. It is better to educate students at a younger age due to there not being as much of a peer pressure factor as there would be when the students become older and become integrated into the social world.