Download Task One A. The first book that I read on the reading list and more Lecture notes Accounting in PDF only on Docsity! Task One A. The first book that I read on the reading list was Last Summer by Holly Chamberlin. This book follows the story of Rosie, a teenage girl from Maine. Switching perspectives from Rosie, her mother, her best friend, and her best friend’s mother, the story details the events that led up to and followed Rosie’s emotional breakdown. Rosie and her best friend, Meg, had been inseparable until their freshman year in high school when everything changed. Meg, fearing that she will be bullied, shares one of Rosie’s deepest secrets with an outside group of girls who had been bullying Rosie. After learning that her best friend had betrayed her trust, Rosie spirals into a devastating depression and begins to self-harm. From Meg’s perspective, the book details the guilt she feels for betraying her best friend. From Rosie’s mother’s perspective, the book shows how upset she is with Meg and her mother. Meg’s mother was her best friend, as well and adds a complicated dynamic into the emotional turmoil that the characters face. From both Rosie’s mother and Meg’s mother’s perspective, the book shows the need to protect and guard our children from such emotional distress. When I was a ninth grader, I was taken out of public school and homeschooled because of relentless bullying. This book connects to my personal perspective by vocalizing how much students can suffer at the hands of other students and other people not necessarily pick-up on what has been going on. To extend that into an educational perspective, I think that, as educators, we spend more time with these children than their parents do. We are with them for more hours of the day and need to be more aware of things that could be happening in their lives that their parents may be unaware of. Slight changes in behavior, reclusiveness, drops in grades can all be warning signs that we may not be seeing a bigger picture. In the book, Rosie’s parents were relatively unaware of what had been going on at school. Rosie states that she didn’t go to a teacher or administrator about the problem because she feared two things: retaliation from her bullies and that her teachers would not believe her. I think that this tells a lot about the state of bullying in education. Our schools should be considered a safe place and, for a lot of these children, it is not. B. While this story does not relate directly into education, it can show us alternate viewpoints. By going through the different perspectives, this book shows us how widespread the effects of bullying are. It doesn’t just affect the person who is bullied, it affects their family and friends as well. This can be helpful in education by giving us more insight into what the lives of bullied students have the potential to become as well as making us more empathetic to these types of situations. C. An important practice that can help students cope with problems stemming from bullying is to be able to teach students how to appropriately respond to situations. From a young age, setting up lessons that encourage students to act appropriately when faced with bullying can help them stop bullying from becoming a cycle. Teaching students about ways to build positive self-esteem can help them counteract any demeaning comments that may come their way. Bullies often engage in demeaning behaviors towards other students to make themselves feel
