Published in the March 2-15, 2016 issue of Morgan Hill Life
By Sabrina Grant’s sixth-grade class at Paradise Valley Elementary School
Bullying is a terrible thing. That terrible thing happened to Bryan Stow and ruined his life forever.
At a Dodgers vs. Giants game in 2011 at the Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles, two adult bullies went too far. Stow was attacked by them because he was wearing a San Francisco Giants jersey in the stadium, and they did not like that.
The two bullies kicked and punched Stow several times, causing him to fall and damage his skull and impact his brain. He was in the hospital in a coma for nine months. After he got out of the coma, he still needed medical help. He needed to be fed through a tube. He had to relearn many life skills such as walking, talking, reading and other activities. During the past years, he has improved so much that he has been able to share his message of anti-bullying in classrooms across America.
Paradise Valley is now a non-bullying school. We have Project Cornerstone, a YMCA program to teach us about anti-bullying. Stow came to our school and told us his story about when he was bullied by the adults and said that it damaged his life.
If we stop kids who are bullies now, then in later years they will make the right decisions and not bully other people when they are adults, Stow told us.
Bullying can hurt people physically and mentally. There are many types of bullying that can hurt people. Relational bullying and cyber-bullying can impact people emotionally and can make them feel depressed or even commit suicide.
Physical bullying is violence against a person that can permanently damage their health, as what happened to Stow. According to the National Center for Educational Statistics, about 22 percent — or one out of every four students — say that have been bullied during the school year. That’s too big a number. We need to stop bullying. Bullying is a major issue in the world today. Stow is an influential example of the nasty effect that can result from it.
After a Junior Journalism workshop by Morgan Hill Life Publisher Marty Cheek, Paradise Valley Elementary School sixth graders in Sabrina Grant’s class wrote this column.
