I recently visited one of the smallest schools in Prince Edward Island in our Island tour to recruit students to help host the International Stop Cyberbullying Youth Summit, Nov 9th, on the Island. The 4th - 10th graders combined were fewer than 40 kids.
I first talked with them about their thoughts on cyberbullying. One of the students asked me to tell everyone that "the same things happen in a tiny school as a big school."
I then asked why they thought that, coming form such a tiny school, they thought they had important things to share about cyberbullying that kids from bigger towns would list to.
One brave and articulate 9th grader shared her opinion in a confident way (that got her selected as one of my summit leaders!) "In a small school like ours in Belfast, everyone knows everything about everyone. When cyberbullying occurs, they all take sides. You can't hide. You have no privacy, no place to get away from it."
Very interesting perspective. I hadn't thought about that before.
That's why students run my international summits. They have things to say that none of the experts had thought about before.
We are almost fully subscribed and I expanded the summit to 800 participants, from 600. If you are interested in attending, visit stopcyberbullying.org. If you want to join us by webcast, you can login to stopcyberbullying.org on Nov 9, from 7:30am ET to 4:30pm ET. No charge for either.
