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We watched a video in which a fictional character, Jack, has a very bad day. He is physically bullied at school and then is hurt even more by online messages when he gets home. As the watcher, you can click an anti-bullying emoji to support him. After watching the video, we googled ourselves to find out our online identity.

This video shows how bullying can hurt people, physically and online. It also shows how speaking up as a bystander can help, a lot.

Most things that come up when you search me, aren’t me. My social media accounts don’t have much personal information on them either.

If a stranger were to search my name, they could think that I am any of the people that show up.

The goal of internet trolls is to upset people, or to cause a conflict and make others suffer.

In class we watched a bullying video that you could interact with, it was called #IamAWitness. During this activity we watched the video all the way through without interacting, we saw that as the video went on without our help the boy in it that was getting bullied just felt worse and worse. After the first time we watched it again, this time we interacted whenever we saw signs of bullying we stopped it and it made things a lot better, not only did the bullies stop bullying the boy, they actually helped him and looked out for him in a way too.

This video definitely made me questions every little thing that i do or say that someone could take very close to heart while I don't think anything of it. Since i don't have any social media yet I think the person that I am online isn't too bad. I think I’d be perceived as a busy and kind of fun person based of who I am online. Internet trolls tend to be negative, obnoxious and annoying, troller’s goals are to irritate, anger or upset whoever might happen to stumble across the troll.

When it comes to anonymity there are positive and negative outcomes, positive things could be that what you out can't necessarily be traced back to you and if something were to go wrong that person would get caught or in trouble, but then again that could be a negative side of it, if someone wrongs you on the internet it could be very difficult to find out who that person was if they were anonymous. The main thing you should take away from this post is that not only is cyberbullying wrong but any form of bullying is wrong and you should always be conscious of what you put or say on the internet because you never know who could be watching or reading and you never know who could get hurt by what you post. Remember, your words have powers so use them wisely.

1. For tech, we watched a video on how bullying can affect someone’s life and how being someone who stands up to bullying affects them too.

2. It reminds me of the movie CyberBully and how she was almost driven to suicide because no chose to stand up for her.

3. Online, I’m a nice person. I don’t get involved in any drama and I appear as friendly.

4. I think people perceive me as nice because of how I am on the internet.

5. The goal of internet trolls is to annoy and get a reaction out of you. If you react, they’ll only bother you more.

6. Something positive about online anonymity is that you can express your opinion without getting in trouble, but something negative about it is that people abuse this power. They use this to bully and harass others without getting caught.

1. The video we watched today in class is the cyber bullying video from I AM A WITNESS website. The classroom activity from today is to look up yourself on Google search and see who you are online. Then we had to pick a partner and look them up and describe them in 5 words.

2. This video brings guilt and fear to my mind on the topic of bullying because I may have done stuff online to people in the past that was not as serious but still considered bullying and I fear that I’ll do it again the future.

3. The person I am found as online is nothing compared to who I am in real life. The only things you can find about me online is a picture or two and my science leadership account. You can find my Facebook, but there are more than one Mindy Saw’s so if the person looking me up had no idea who I was then they wouldn’t find out anything from Facebook.

4. I think people would perceive me as a non social person based on my appearance online.

5. The goal of internet trolls are to get responses from the victim of their choice.

6. The positive results of online anonymity is that the person attacking gets away with what they do temporarily and forever if no one cares enough to find out. The negative result is that once you’ve done something, you can always be found even though it might a long while.

The Fun Language

I speak in a very unique way to everyone around me. This causes people that either love me or hate me. This unique language really didn’t start until around 4th grade. That was my first time with a lot of freedom to talk when and how I wanted. The transition almost ruined my life, but saved it at the same time.

Up until that transition,  I attended Waldron Mercy Academy, a Catholic middle school. It was very strict and dull. There was always a lot of homework and you couldn't use ANY electronics, not even at lunch or recess time. In fact, once, my phone  fell out of my pocket while I was walking down the hallway and my teacher picked it up.

“You can have this back in a few days.”, she said

“Why? It just fell out of my pocket.”, I said

“I should have been off in your backpack!”, she said

“Okay, but it was off and it only fell out of my pocket. I wasn’t using it or anything.”, I said

“No arguing. You'll see this in 3 days now for arguing with me.”, she said as I sulked away.

Basically,  my point is that my early school years had little to no freedom. This caused me to be somewhat quiet and shy, until 4th grade. That's when my classmate and I got a little more freedom and knowing me, they gave me an inch and I took a mile. So I became a happy and boisterous class clown. I always made sure everyone was laughing with and not at me. I started making friends with my classmates and enemies with my teachers. I really liked the life that I had chosen. This continued all the way up until 9th grade.

On my first day of SLA, I was very shy and quiet. Though, this changed in a matter of days,  meaning  I was back to good ol loud david by the 3rd week of school. I just needed to adjust to the kids in SLA. With all the freedom I got with this school that I am currently in, I just became a full on comedian, just like how I was at my old school. I was always loud and enjoyable to others. A lot of people said I was fun to be around, even some of my teachers! During the hour of my first lunch I decided to try and use my phone. I was shocked because I realized, it was allowed. I just got too excited which caused me to run around yelling things like

“FREEDOM… NO MORE CATHOLIC EDUCATION FOR MEE… SCREW UNIFORMS… SLA  FOR THE WIN!”.

Everyone thought this was hilarious and was so surprised at how little freedom I had in middle school. Whenever me and my friends came up with a good joke, I took it and entertained my entire classrooms with it. By the end of 9th grade year, the small amount of people that disliked me were cool with me and about 90% of my teachers hated me. I had gotten too many progress notes for being loud and disruptive I can’t even count them. Now my ADHD was a huge part of this and I stopped taking my meds for 9th grade year which was a terrible idea, because at the end of the year, my grade obsessed parents were upset with my barely passing grades. They punished me and tried to take my summer away. That was not the worst part, they made me do Khan Academy every day. The good news were that she was not home to watch me do it. So naturally, I played video games and scooted all day long. I wasn’t really a rebel unless I needed to be one.

This made my summer very fun, but I was not able to learn anything or prepare for 10th grade and when it came around, I was not prepared. My parents made me start taking my ADHD medication again and I felt imprisoned again. On the first day of 10th grade, I was somewhat quiet and all of my friends were surprised. It was mainly because of my meds and because I had some new classmates to adjust to, but as always, good ol loud david came out by the 2nd week of school. This loudness in my language made me very fun and also very annoying. I was very unfocused in class and at the same time, my meds only let me focus on one thing, but it wasn’t school. My unique language included things like,

“OH, I say that’s a BIT cheeky!”,

“That’s a little edgy m8 m9.”,

“Aw a bit of edgy banter if i do say so myself.”,

“The host with (*sticks tongue out for an exaggerated “TH” sound*) THE most.”,

And much, MUCH more. I had a lot of favorites and I always had so much energy in class. So I would take it and put it to my language, which in essence created a nuclear bomb.

I was off the rails in school. I needed a better way to release my energy without getting in trouble and ignoring teachers. My language was becoming a weakness for me in school, because it would always get me up to no good. So I decided the best way to release all that energy was to do the one thing I liked the most. I decided to practice my scoot tricks in the morning before school. This helped me so much. I was so much more focused and calm in school. I had less stress and with that I learned to control my language.

I made an alter ego for when I was speaking to important people and I started calming down and trying to not be so annoying in class. I began to speak properly to my teachers and parents. I began to use my language as a skill instead of a weakness. My parents always told my I had good talking skills. They told me that I worded things in a way that was very professional and persuasive. Now I sit back and think to myself just how powerful I have become from my language and all this time, all I had to do was reveal it.

“Hey Eli, get a kippah on, let’s go!”

“Sorry Mom, one second let me find one.”

“Eli! You do this every week! Hurry up!”

It was shabbos morning or the sabbath as some other people call it. Man I am not excited to go today. I’m just not feeling it. Maybe if I say I have work to do my Mom won’t make me go.

“Hey Mom! I have a ton of work to do I don’t know if I should go.”

“Eli Block! You are going to Synagogue.”

Reluctantly I walked down stairs and headed for Synagogue. The walk is short and pleasant with the cool breeze and smell of ashes in a fire place running through the city. We arrived at the small Synagogue that sits atop a Boar's Head Deli in the middle of center city. The smell of waiting cholent (a Jewish food often made for the meal after Synagogue) rushed through the opening door. I walked about the steep narrow stairs to the top of the Synagogue. I hanged my coat up on the rack threw my kippah on my head and strode into the main room where the Rabbi was giving his Dvar Torah. As he began to speak about this weeks Torah portion I fell asleep.. Resting my arm on my leg and my head on my arm I fell into a restful quick sleep.

I was woken by the violent poking of my brother telling me to wake up before we started to pray again. Sleepily I rubbed my eyes and stood up. I opened my Siddur (Jewish prayer book) and turned to where we were. The familiar cadence of the Amidah hummed through my head. I started to sing along with the community. The lines and lines of prayers to God would go on for another hours or so. Then kiddush started. It is a small meal after synagogue’s prayers and this is where a lot of my true language comes out.

“Hey Eli, can you babysit for Yuval tonight?”

“Yeah sure, um what times do you need me for?”

“Can you be there until 11 or 12?”

“Yeah sure I'll have my mom email you after Shabbos for your address and everything.”

“Okay sounds good thank you so much.”

A polite 15 year old boy who grew up in a middle class neighborhood. In my past experience, I was not unique. I went to a school filled with people who spoke just like me. The history of my language is no secret. My family has been in the United States for a while and the way I speak is a result of that. My family are European Jews from Poland. Both my father and mother grew up in primarily white neighborhoods and they both speak what someone would call “Proper English.”

To analyze the history of my language to a further extent I can look at the several parts to the question “what is the history of my language?” The history of my personal language where I, myself learned to speak or where my ancestors learned to speak. To start I can look at where I personally learned to speak.

I was placed into an environment where almost everyone speaks proper English. Being sent to a private Jewish day school meant no one used slang, no one cursed. So using slang and curse words came to me later as I grew up. Continuing through middle school proper English was still the norm. As social media became more popular among my friends and me, using slang became more common. Then I came to high school where slang and curse words were used in abundance and so that became a norm for me. I know as I continue through life I will stop using slang and most curse words and use more of a proper English like I did when I was younger.

My ancestors spoke Yiddish and as they moved to the United States they adapted. Back in the early 1900’s using proper English and respectful language was not only the norm but using something to the contrary was cause for punishment. My grandfather is a great example of this use of language. y grandfather’s speech is mature and refined. He too grew up in Philadelphia and although he grew up here he does not have a Philadelphia accent.

To look back my language is a direct result of my environment. Therefore the history of my language is not deep. Since my environment is changing my language does to. It is not a constant, it might change based on my age, the area in which I live, and so many other factors.

However there is another language that is not changing. My second language, Hebrew, has not changed as my environment did. It is unique to one specific environment. Hebrew comes out in prayer. When I go to Synagogue, I pray and chant in hebrew. The language does not change it stays as it is written and it will stay written in one specific way forever.

The history of my hebrew language is a result of my Jewish environment. It does not run deep like English to me. My speech is a result of the history and experiences through my fifteen years of life on earth. However the part of the English language I share with hundreds of thousands of people is in no way unique but the history of it runs very deep through. Through immigration and the norms of years and years in the United States a speech was formed that is now you used by many including myself.

“Use correct grammar.  I’m tired of that slang, you need to speak proper English.  Where do you think slang is going to get you?  No professional baseball players talk with slang.  You need to sound like you’re educated.”

“Ok mommom, I will try to speak correctly from now on.  I don’t mean any disrespect but, I don’t see how you expect me to just drop the way I speak.  I have been speaking this way my whole life, it is not just something I can forget about.”

My grandmother is kind of strict on “talking correctly.” I don’t like getting told that I don’t speak correctly because it is the way I talk and I don’t want that to change.  I want people to accept the way I speak, and not criticize me for it.  Clearly everybody in the world speaks differently.

I know that a lot of people go back and forth with speaking differently to their friends and the way they talk to their parents, but I can honestly say that I speak with my friends the same exact way I speak to my parents. Except, I don’t curse at my parents.  My dad sort of speaks the same way I do, so it does not bother him. My mom just accepts it and she does not care as long as she can understand me. A regular conversation with my dad would be something like this…

“Yuurrrpppp, Pops where you at?”

“Wassup, how was school”

“No bad, same old same old.”

“Yeah I feel you.  I been chillin all day yamean.”

“Yeah I wish I could do that. (Chuckles) But wassup with dinner doe?”

When I talk to my friends we usually greet each other like this…

“Yuurrrpppp.  Wassup bro.”

“Chillin… Yo bro I’m hungry.”

“You tryna go to the store?”

“We out!”

The way I talk doesn’t change based on who I’m speaking to.  Of course when  I’m speaking to an adult or one of my elders I will speak more polite but when I’m talking to my parents and friends my speech is mostly the same.  

I grew up in North Philadelphia. I lived in the same house my entire life. I’ve never lived in an area where there has been different accents or different forms of slang.  Even though I have been to places where they don't speak the same as me, I have never stayed around it long enough for it to have an effect on me.  At a young age, hearing how my parents spoke, and listening to how people spoke around me, kind of formed the way I speak and the terminology I use.  I personally believe that whatever you grow up hearing or whatever you grow up around will form the way you speak.  As much as people try to change the way they speak, they always have a way to go back to their roots.  Say someone gets in an argument, I hear people say things like this all the time…. “I tried to be nice and polite but they kept pushing me and the North Philly side of me came out.” or the Brooklyn side or the Oakland side etc.  So people can try to change the way they speak but there is always a way that they find themselves right back to their roots.

“Hey”

“Wassup”

“Watchu been up to?”

“Nothin much still playin for this awful team”

“Whats wrong wit it?”

“We just awful, the team is so bad”

This was early in the morning at suburban station on a wednesday. Out of the crowd of people coming up the steps I ran into my friend Jelani, like I do every morning. As all the people walked around close to a light jogging speed we stopped and talked by one of the many tan and brown marble pillars about how the teams we were on were doing. He hated his team, as usual. It seemed like every team he went to he hated.

“You playing for them next year?” I ask

“Nah” he replied.

I laughed

“Who you playin for?” he asked

“Gallagher, still” I said

“When do they have tryouts?”

“Sometime soon, I just got the email the other day” I said.

If this was a conversation with me and my mom it would sound so much different. It would be a lot more proper than the conversation I have with my friends. It would sound like this:

“Hey son” My mom says.

“Hey” I respond.

“How was your day at school?”

“Good”

“Get any homework today?”

“Yea”

“What classes?”

“Algebra and Spanish” My usual answer so she doesn’t bother me about any more homework

“Well you better get to it and stop messing around with whatever else you’re doing and start on your homework”

“OK” I say

This conversation usually happens when she comes home from work and she sees me eating something standing up behind the counter in the kitchen. But I think my language changes like this depending on where I go because I don’t want to stand out and be considerd weird. I rather just fit in and be like everyone else. I hate being the center of attention most of the time, I only like it when im trying to say something important or I just want alot of people to hear what im saying.

“Hey Taytiana, My name is Jess! I love your bangs!”

“Thanks, I like ya hair, ya're so pretty”

“Awe, thanks hun. You have an accent,where are you from?”

“Uhh….North Philly.You?” I said puzzled thinking to myself, where else could I be from and what accent?

“Fishtown!”

This statement confused me even more because where I live in North Philly is right next to fishtown. Fishtown is a primarily white neighborhood. My neighborhood is more of the slums of North Philly, with all the drug corners and junkies. Coming to terms with the fact that I had an accent was hard for me because it was so unbelievable that I could have one! Of course everyone has a distinct voice but did I really have an accent? When I got home my mom said ‘maybe it’s because you are Puerto Rican’, which made me look even closer at the typical stereotypes of Latina speech. I slightly fit the bill; feisty, fast and putting accents on English words the way they were in Spanish. Although, these things were barely noticeable to my family(who barely considered me Puerto Rican or Nicaraguan, because the color of my pale skin, freckles, and light eyes) me speaking surely must of stuck out to someone who has barely heard anyone roll their R’s or or put accents on A’s and O’s. Something else that must of stuck out to people must of been my slight use of slang from my ‘hood’. Growing up with uncles as drug dealers and gang members you might develop a sly but tough tone. Not to mention having  family from the bronx, I must of picked up a thing or two.

For a long while I figured if I can find a way, a way maybe to sound more white, maybe people wouldn’t take me as a huge joke or laugh at the way I say things. Maybe, just maybe,  if I could cover where I am from people's moms they wouldn’t look at me in fear from my slang or be threatened by the loud proudness in my voice. “ethnic identity is twin skin to linguistic identity-I am my language. Until I can take pride in my Language, I cannot take pride in myself” as Glona Anzaldua said in borderlands/ la frontera. This is exactly what I did, instead of excluding myself from the beauty of my roots, I tried to rip them out; but this was my time to reground myself and take pride in one of the huge things that make up me - my language.

From borderlands/ la frontera by Glona Anzaldua “for some of us language is a homeland” The way my tongue rolls and I exaggerate sounds is making each word mine with a little twist. It’s the only thing that keeps me sane when I am not walking on the ground where I was raised on or taken back to the things that gotten carried from the motherland my family speaks so greatly of, that I know is great. When I speak spanglish, my mix of spanish, english, and slang; I can feel my family in my veins and my jays smacking the pavement as my cousin's footsteps follow all at once. No matter where I am, my language takes me home to my family.

“My name is Taytiana and I am from North Philly” Said Saamir with his hand on hip and other snapping in one long circle on stage, in a feisty manner.

I dropped my jaw and I thought to myself ‘what? are you kidding me?’crossing my arms as a slightly irritated emotion took over my face. While laughs filled the room.

“I don’t think I sound like that.”

“A little,” Savannah said giggling.

Everyone has their own way of speaking, and it is one of the many things that people notice when they are spoken to. Some people speak in tones that seem more polite or even tones that seem very rude. Saying that one might mean something they say in a certain tone, becomes a guessing game.male and a female go out on a date to a  fancy restaurant. The male  speaks  in a British accent, and the female speaks in an  American English accent. The girl  suddenly finds herself attracted to the young man who has taken her out on this date, whom is speaking in a British accent. The girl thinks that the man’s accent  sounds cute and some of what may seem intelligent. While to the guy, the girl sounds quite strange. There are a million people around the world, and each part has its own way of communication between one another. Some languages get mixed, confused, and even changed.  Of course, that means that every individual has their own way of speaking. What may be normal to one, can sound like gibberish to another person.

Those who don’t speak the same way as you,  often times sounds different and strange. On the other hand, the way you speak may sound different to someone else. It is a recurring pattern with communication. The way you speak determines  how you communicate with other. You are mainly judged   based off how you communicate with them. For example, if someone were to say “She are too pretty, to be talking like dat,” the assumption  is made is that the person is not educated. Let us  compare it to the opposite now. A counter example would be if someone were to say, “ She is too pretty to be talking like that!” There is a clear difference between how the two sound when they say the sentence. The example that was used previously  sounding  more educated, than the last example. . This shows that not everyone is grammatically correct when they talk.

Language also  intersects with one's identity, because it really determines how educated you sound. If you speak a different language, it gives people an insight of where you are from and how you were raised if you have some sort of accent,  based on  the way you speak. For Example, James Baldwin said, “It goes without saying, then, that language is also a political instrument, means, and proof of power.” The language you learn to speak is a way of getting through life. It is a key of communication and without it, all doors are locked. If you speak Spanish, people assume that your parents are Hispanic or have members that come from a Spanish speaking country. Some people speak with an accent, and people usually questions where that person is from or where they got their accent from. The assumption  is made is that you were born somewhere that caused  you  to develop your language/accent.  In my case , I speak English, and it has been confirmed that I have an American accent. That is a confirmed fact, because even though I am around those who I believe talk the same, others  who are not from the  area in which  I currently live, believe I sound different.  I sound strange to them, because they talk a different way from where one is from.

Personally, I have been judged by the way that I talk. Some may say that I talk like I am “white” or I “do not talk like I am black.”  What they really mean is that I talk like I am educated (which I am). The majority of the people I have a spoken to expect me to use the common slang..  being raised in a household where education has a main role in our lives, has caused this to happen.  My apologies for sounding proper when I speak to those whom expect me to talk my color. How does one speak a color? I don’t think that is possible, and it is  because we live in a society where if you are white you are expected to speak proper. James Baldwin said “ Now, I do not know what white Americans would sound like if there had never been any black people in the United States, but they would not sound the way they sound.” If you are black, then you are expected to speak uneducated. I sound different, because I am African American girl speaking proper English. Sometimes my friends would call me a “white girl,” and even though I had no idea what that even meant, they kept telling me that I spoke a color. I did not like being labeled as something other than my name. It was only because I did not use the common slang that “black people spoke” so I was meeting the expectations that society has for me. You can be African American, Educated, and speak properly than others who do. The thing is that, I do say things different from others that are around me. I learned the way that I pronounce certain words from my parents and my older siblings. For example, I say the words egg and banana different from others. Everyone always ask me to repeat what I said, and they try to correct me, but that is just the way I learned how to pronounce certain words.