Sticks and Stones and The Story of Karen Klein

This is the story of Karen Klein - a woman made sadly famous because she was bullied and harassed on her job. Due to the advantages (and I use that term loosely) of convenient technology, we have this incident on video. That in itself a violation of her dignity. Karen Klein, the school bus monitor from Greece, New York, who was verbally bullied and physically threatened by the same middle school students she was charged to monitor and protect. This account is one of the most disturbing things I've ever witnessed.

But not for the reasons you might think. Take a moment to watch.

Then I'll tell you why.

Shocked? I wasn't. And that is what bothers me most.

While Karen Klein may seem like a defenseless woman who can't speak for herself, and who has every right to strike back in anger, we see none of the usual coping mechanisms we teach children who are bullied to use in play from Karen's seat on the bus.  She told no one. As we find ourselves gasping at representations of twisted adolescence bouncing around on that bus, we watch a resigned adult, one seemingly coping with her everyday existence as if it's normal. Her quiet command and self-control is amazing. And heartbreaking. This is an anomaly, we say, an uncommon event like the one that took Matthew Shepard's life in the nineties or the cruelty that pushed an emotionally tortured New Jersey Rutgers student off the George Washington Bridge.

That couldn't be further from the truth.

Karen Klein is far from weak.

And this is far from a rare occurrence..

Why did she sit there and endure this torment? She had no choice. Stuck on a bus. She's the adult. And although the perpetrators received a year's suspension from school, those are consequences I personally believe were doled out due to the public nature of this event and are far from how these situations are normally handled.  Most of the time there is little or no consequence. Because adults are much less apt to report bullying than kids - unless the child is the victim - and then they are legally required to do so. But when it happens to them? No.  It's embarrassing. They're adults. They're supposed to handle it quietly or ignore it. The sadder truth is that they are expected to endure it. "They're just kids," after all. And within the always-do-what's-best-for-children internal mantra ingrained into public school teachers heads from day one - no one wants to say it.

Apparently, what's best for children is bad for everyone else. 

Only when it came to the attention of a nation did we sit up and take notice of what it's doing to the culture of our schools.

But what is it doing to the souls of our teachers?

I sometimes wonder when I'm going to turn on the news and hear of a suicide note left by an educator, who chose to end the shame instead of quietly resign. How many times in the course of a school year do you think this happened to Ms. Klein? How many times in the course of a school year do you think this happens to other adults in a school building? How many times in the course of a school year do you think this happens to teachers?

Everyday.

I am here to tell you it is everyday. Not once a day. Not even twice a day. Many times a day. Every single day. Somewhere from the back of a classroom, on an activity bus, in the hallway, at the football game, on a Facebook page - it's happening.
Do you think it is a lesser hurt because it falls from the mouths of children?

How many times in the course of a lifetime and a career do you think Karen Klein and every other adult in charge of adolescents who freely insult, disrespect and bully them will think about the abuse they received at the hands of children?

Everyday.

How long will it affect them?

Every day of their lives. On an unconscious level, they will pay for it somehow. 

We know from research that verbal wounds from childhood shape the psychological and physical destinies of people for most of their lives. We know that words are powerful. Somehow we stopped counting the stones when we became adults.

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