“I Survived Being Bullied”

From Scholastic News
By Adama Kamara

Vocabulary

bullying: calling someone bad names, like "stupid", "fat", "loser", as well as hitting, pushing and other types of violence

target: someone who is bullied
depressed: feeling extremely sad for a long period of time
counselor: a person who works at a school and talks with students about their problems
transferred: moved from one school to another
launched: started, got going

 

Adama used to eat her lunch in the bathroom

I was not popular in sixth grade, but I had friends. In seventh grade, those friends started being mean to me. Soon I became the target of the popular girls. Samantha* was the leader. She and her friends bullied me all the time. I was one of the few black students at my school in Kentucky. Samantha and her friends would call me names and tell me to “go back to Africa.” The insults made me feel terrible. But being left out was even worse. I would lock myself in a stall in the bathroom and cry my eyes out. Sometimes, I even ate my lunch there. It was the only place I felt safe.

BREAKDOWN
When eighth grade started, I hoped things would be different. But things got worse, and I became very depressed. After a few days, I went to the school counselor. I told him that I wanted to kill myself. He called my parents. Telling an adult was the first step to changing my life. My parents helped me come up with a solution that worked for me. I transferred to another middle school. I didn’t have many friends there, but no one bullied me. I felt safe.

SHOWDOWN
At the end of the school year, the chorus at my old school had a concert. I went with my mom. Afterward, I went backstage to see a friend. There, I saw Samantha and her friends. I thought we could put the past behind us. I walked up to them and started to talk, but Samantha stopped me. “Shut up, Adama,” she said. “No one here likes you. Go back to your other school.”  She called me every name under the sun. Her friends all laughed. I stood there with tears in my eyes. Finally, I left with my mom.

MY BULLY STORY
Later that year, I had an idea. I wanted to tell someone my story. I wanted to give other bullied teens a place to tell their stories too. I decided to build a Web site. During ninth grade, I called every Web-site-building company I could find. They all wanted way too much money. Finally, I found a good deal. I used $1,000 of my own money. I had saved that money from years of babysitting, allowance, and birthdays.

MOVING ON
When I started high school last year, everything got better. Today, I never sit alone at lunch. I hardly ever even walk down the halls alone. I get tons of texts on my phone. People know me and like me. I finally launched my Web site last spring. It’s at www.yourbullystory.com. A boy who posted his story wrote to me. He said that he felt better after sharing his story. I hope thousands of kids, teens, and even adults post their stories too. Sharing my story made me realize I’m tougher than I thought I was. I am proud that I survived being bullied.

*This name has been changed.

Can You Help Stop Bullying?
• If you get a text or see an Internet post that makes fun of someone, don’t reply. Tell an adult.
• If your friends are teasing or insulting someone, tell them to stop. It’s not OK, and it’s not funny.
• If you see someone being left out, be friendly to them.

*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *

Derek's experience with being bullied

When I was in grade 8 (13 years old), I and some other students were bullied by 3 boys named Mike Begalke, Timmy Soubliere and Colin Downes, day after day, month after month. They called us bad names, pushed us, knocked our books out of our arms onto the floor, and punched us.

One of the boys in my class, Garth, was bullied the most. He was very smart, fat, and had freckles and red hair. One day, I was in the hall before our first class had started. I heard the other students talking about Garth.

Garth's best friend, Jamie, told us that Garth had committed suicide -- he had killed himself by hanging himself with a rope in his parents' garage.

I blame those three bullies for Garth's death.

Our teacher told us that Garth had died, but she did not tell us how he died. Back then, there was no support for us - no counselors to help us understand or deal with our shock and sadness. There is much more help for students today.

That same year, the three bullies stopped me after school. They had rocks in their hands and pockets and started throwing them at me. I ran as fast as I could to get away from them, but they kept chasing me, throwing rocks. I finally ran to a friend's house, and when the bullies saw his mother answer the door, they went away.

I stopped going to school for three weeks. My mother did not know, because she left for work early in the morning.

There's more ...

When I was 28, my wife and I went to a dinner organized by the company she worked for.  There were about 150 people at about 20 big tables. A woman who worked with my wife told us she was waiting for her boyfriend, who was late.

When he arrived, I was shocked. It was Colin Downes, one of the bullies from grade 8. I remembered poor Garth's death. For a second, I thought about smashing Colin in the head with my coffee cup. Instead, I was polite, and said we were in public school together, and that I remembered him very well. 

He didn't remember me. 

3-2-1...Blastoff!

Vocabulary 

Manned launch = a launch is when a spaceship takes off; manned means the spaceship has people on board

NASA = National Aeronautics and Space Administration

From Time For Kids

At 11:29 a.m., 2011, almost one million people lined Florida's beaches and held their breath as they witnessed the final blastoff of the space shuttle Atlantis.

"It's just so powerful," said Cherie Cabrera, who came to watch the launch. "There are so few people who have the ability to go to space, and to be here watching it launch and feeling it rise, you feel like you're a part of it." For Cabrera and other space fans, this is their last chance to see a manned launch for several years. The shuttle program is ending because of its high budget. One flight costs about $1.45 billion and NASA has spent $196 billion on the program.

For the final four shuttle astronauts who boarded Atlantis earlier this morning, the trip had special meaning. Commander Christopher Ferguson saluted those who were part of the space program as Atlantis launched only 2½ minutes after its scheduled takeoff time.

 

Ferguson and his crew are headed for the International Space Station (ISS), a lab that orbits Earth and houses space crews from many different countries. The shuttle is bringing the ISS more than 8,000 pounds of supplies, which will last about a year. Atlantis will bring back to Earth as much of the trash accumulated at the ISS as possible.

An Awesome History

The craft's 12-day mission ends a remarkable 30-year program. Since 1981, five different shuttle vehicles have been sent into space. There have been 135 space voyages and the shuttles have carried a total of 777 astronauts. The crafts have traveled a combined distance of half a billion miles—far enough to have flown past Jupiter.

The shuttle program has increased our knowledge of space. Its astronauts helped build the ISS and its shuttles have flown scientists and researchers to live and work aboard the space station. In addition, shuttle crews launched unmanned probes to study Venus, the sun and Jupiter. The Hubble Space telescope, which still orbits Earth and sends back photos of deepest space, was launched—and later repaired—by shuttle astronauts. Hubble is considered to be the most advanced space observatory ever sent into orbit.

Next on the Horizon: Orion

Atlantis is the last space shuttle to orbit Earth, but NASA has big plans for further space exploration. Sometime in 2016, a spacecraft known as Orion will launch. Orion is a more advanced version of the Apollo spacecraft, which went to the moon. NASA officials say Orion may visit Mars and even nearby asteroids.

So though the shuttle program is ending, space fans have much to look forward to. "The shuttle is always going to be a reflection of what a great nation can do when it dares to be bold," said Mike Leinbach, NASA's launch director. "We're not ending the journey today . . . we're completing a chapter of a journey that will never end."

Is Bottled Water Really Better?

From Scholastic News:

Last year, Americans bought 31 billion bottles of water. Stack those up, and the plastic tower would stretch from Earth to the moon and back—eight times!

Why do we love bottled water so much? It’s convenient. Just grab a bottle and go. Then toss it out when you’re done. It’s healthy too, compared with sugary sodas and drinks. And it’s much better than tap water.

Or is it?

In fact, one third of all bottled water is tap water. Many top-selling brands, such as Dasani and Aquafina, sell tap water that has been run through a filter.

It turns out that waters bottled from springs and streams—like Fiji—aren’t necessarily “better” than the water you can get from your kitchen sink. In taste tests, tap water often wins. And chances are that the water flowing from your tap has been tested more than what you are guzzling from a bottle. That’s because most cities regularly test tap water to make sure it doesn’t contain dangerous germs or chemicals. Bottled-water companies don’t have to test as rigorously.

But the main criticism of bottled water isn’t the quality of the water—or even the fact that Americans are paying for water they can get for free. It’s those plastic bottles. Though they can be recycled, few actually are. Eighty percent are thrown into the trash—that’s 33 million bottles a day that wind up in landfills, where they will sit for hundreds of years.

These mountains of trashed plastic bottles have inspired a growing number of communities to take action. The town of Concord, Massachusetts, plans to ban the purchase of bottled water. Some college campuses are doing the same. At Cherry Tree Elementary School in Indiana, kids get reusable water cups with their lunch. Bottled water is still for sale, but most kids simply raise their hands at lunch and hold up three fingers—Cherry Tree’s sign for “I want water, please.” The four-year-old program has been a big success.

But not everyone can simply choose to avoid bottled water. Around the world, 1 billion people do not have access to safe water. If they drank from the tap or from local supplies, they could get seriously sick—or even die. For them, bottled water isn’t a convenience. It’s a life-or-death necessity.

In addition, banning bottled water could lead people to drink more unhealthy beverages, like soda. And these sugary drinks contribute to America’s growing problem with obesity.

Still, it seems that America might be losing its thirst for bottled water. Sales are dropping. Sales of reusable water bottles are soaring. And many towns want to ban the sale of bottled water, as Concord plans to do.