Wednesday, February 18, 2015

Digital Wixie Scrapbook


Thursday, August 27, 2009

Bully the New School Year

It's time for school to start all over the nation, and as our kids go back to school we have to address bullies. It's a topic that has become hot over the past few years, especially with cyber-bullying opportunities.

Bullies are not really isolated to just school. They are part of our everyday life. The other day I witnessed a teenager intimidate an older person at Wal-Mart over a parking space. I also attended a meeting and witnessed bullying amongst adults. As a matter of fact, I was one of the victims of a "bully couple" at that same meeting. I'll admit, I handled it wrong. I gave them the outburst they were looking for and told them all off. My temper really flared.

I'm glad my son wasn't there to see it because it was the WRONG way to handle a bully. I knew that afterwards. As one half of the bully couple sat there and smirked, I realized I gave her what she was looking for. My temper flared even more and I reacted even worse. They won the battle that night. What's worse, is I knew that this couple acted like that. They have a habit of acting like they are better than everyone else, and they turn on their "friends". Before the meeting, I thought that we were friends. Our children sometimes play together, we talked at the bus stop, and we were friendly towards each other. However, I should have remembered how she treated another friend that lost their use to them and been prepared for this attack.

I have a ten year old child who gets bullied, and he's been learning to bully right back. That's completely wrong. I need to teach him to check his anger that develops when the bullies start, how to deflect the bully's taunts, and then how to handle the emotions that build up inside after dealing with a bully (even if it was a positive outcome for yourself).

I have found plenty of curriculum online to use, and plan on introducing to him the BrianPOP movie about Bullying tomorrow afternoon. He and I are going to do our own study on how to handle these social pests so we can be part of the solution, and not the problem.

For older kids who tend to be the bully, even slightly, I recommend reading the book "19 Seconds". More on that later.

Tuesday, March 3, 2009

Do Your Homework

It's been awhile since I have blogged. Like many, I've been extremely busy. Right now I am busy on social networking sites for pleasure and business, preparing for several trainings with big customers, involved in getting our neighborhood watch program started, and other areas of our neighborhood.

I live in an HOA, deed restricted community. We are governed by a board of elected officials and managed by a company. In my case, Spring Ridge is being managed by Premiere Community Consultants. At least until the end of the month. The board elected to dismiss Premiere at the end of the month.

Here's my concern, the board has yet to be trained officially. They've had since November to be trained, but have ignored the requests. Many acted with prejudice. But the biggest complaint of them all is that they did not get the quotes for other management companies in place and had someone lined up to hire before releasing Premiere. They have left us with a possible gap of management coverage, and a risk of having fees increased if a new company is lower than Premiere's.

So why am I venting this on an educational blog? Well, for those of you who are teaching a career choice or business course, would your students find this action acceptable? More than likely not. It would be interesting to hear what the students have to say on this matter. I know my FBLA students that I meet up with at the end of this month would agree that first there needs to be a mediation, then get everything lined up to make sure that the HOA is covered.

Economically speaking, would it make sense to risk raising rates in a community where homes are already in foreclosure and hard to sell?

Little things to think about.

My answer, even after school is over, you will need to do your homework!