Teens Talk About Advocacy - Episode 25

On this week's episode of PACERTalks About Bullying, we talked with high school students about all things advocacy. They shared their opinions on why it's important to advocate for yourself, as well as advocating for your peers who might be experiencing bullying.

Transcript

>> Hey there welcome back to pacer talks about bullying, I'm Bailey, we're glad you're here. On this week's episode we talked with high school students about all things advocacy; both advocating for themselves and advocating for others. This first question that we asked them is why they would advocate for someone experiencing bullying. Let's hear what they have to say.

>> I would stand up for them because I would hope someone would stand up for me in that situation. Because I would never want to see someone get bullied and not -- and have me not do anything about it.

>> I feel like everyone at least experiences bullying once in their life. So all of us can say that we've been through it and we can relate to other people. And advocating for other people it helps them to build up their confidence and eventually they can spread their wings and soar and be a star. Because I honestly think that everyone is a star, they just need to figure out what their potential is and how to put that mask away or to pull that barrier away from them.

>> I've been bullied and I know how it feels, I know what it can make you think. And you just see somebody going through that and it just hurts you really much like very much. Just remember there is people out there that love you for you and that care about you.

>> As you can tell from these students answers advocating for others can make a huge difference. In this second question we ask students their tips for someone experiencing bullying and why self advocacy is so important? Let's hear what they had to say about this question.

>> Don't engage but stick up for yourself. Because like you want to stick up for yourself but don't make it so that this whole thing turns into like an even deeper problem. So I would say stick up for yourself but don't turn it into something bigger. And also tell an adult, that would really help. And I know everyone says that but it really does. And even if it's not your parents or you counselors or just a trusted adult.

>> I would tell them to just you know -- start, take baby steps. Say if someone says something really insulting to you, you don't have to give them a snarky comment. But you can stand up for yourself and say like I really don't appreciate that. If you take baby steps eventually you build up your confidence and then you just say enough is enough. And I've had to go through that myself and I believe that taking those baby steps and being able to like just stand up for myself is what helped me the most. And there was the people around me like my -- my grandmother she was the biggest inspiration in my life, she helped me with bullying, she helped me figure out who I am as a person and she just taught me that like you can't let people stop you from being who you are. Because who you are is what makes you stand out in the whole entire crowd and that's what makes your star shine the brightest in my opinion.

>> Don't be nervous because chances are the person that you talk to have gone through that themselves. Like the reason counselors or my counselor at my school wants to become a counselor was because she went through bullying and she wants to help other kids get over it and just give them advice on how to deal with it when it happens. And don't feel nervous about talking to somebody because if you talk to somebody it'll make you feel better that you talked about it with someone. But if you feel like you can't trust anybody write it down and give it to the counselor so they can read over it and then you guys can meet about it and you can explain why you felt that way. There's just a lot of things that you could do that would help you.

>> And that wraps up this week's episode of pacer talks about bullying. Thank you so much to all the amazing students in this week's video. We'll see you right back her next week and remember together we can create a world without bullying. See ya.

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