A Graduate Travel Abroad Program in
Education to Paris, France
We are proud to announce that this is the sixth year of our Study
Abroad Program. For the past five years many applicants had
traveled to Italy and France. This year our applicants will
be traveling to Paris, France.
The School of Education believes in giving our students the
competitive edge in the field of education by exposing them to a
global environment and having a well-rounded perspective of the
field of pedagogy.
While
studying abroad you will be able to experience first hand how
another country’s 
education
system instructs their students and this will give you a broader
perspective on education. As an education major there are
multiple opportunities for you to explore the education system in
other countries.
Learning in an international environment enhances a student’s
intellect to become an effective educator. As an educator we
hold a responsibility to the students we teach to be open minded
and well rounded individuals. Our students wish to have teachers
with life experience and knowledge not just of the subject that
they are teaching, but also of what is going on in our growing
global community. Being able to relate global events and history in
the classroom is essential in providing our students with a broad
knowledge of how things work and understanding different cultures
and ideas.
This Travel Abroad Program is open, not only too our St. John’s
Graduate students, but to all educators.
For more information on our Study Abroad Program, contact Dr. Smita
Guha, guhas@stjohns.edu or
Bernadette Zacharuk, zacharub@stjohns.edu.
_____________________________________________________________________
Bullying in
Real and Cyber Worlds: What Needs to be an Ongoing
Conversation
By Sandra Abrams, Ph.D.
Bullying. Some say it is part of the human
condition and culture, a type of territory-claiming exercise
similar to a Silverback drumming his chest to establish
dominance. To discuss the existence of primitive or
innatei gestures and positioning (a debatable
pointii) may help to rationalize bullying, but should we
do that—rationalize bullying? Should we be able to say that
we all need to be bullied to ‘develop a thick skin’? A
character-building experience (usually a euphemism to help the pain
subside) doesn’t have to stem from victimization. Rather,
doing the right thing and acting ethically is a stronger, healthier
character-building experience.
No doubt bullying is a knotty topic, aptly
distinguished as a ‘tangled ball’ by Susan Raisch, the founder of
the anti-bullying blog, Tangled Ball (http://www.tangledball.blogspot.com).
And bullying becomes increasingly complicated by its presence in
virtual environments and the viral nature of vituperative (and
sometimes subversive) words spreading through a click of an online
button. The solution to bullying is not simple. But, as Susan
Raisch suggests on her blog, it’s a matter of “pulling out one
strand, one problem and one perspective at a time.” 
And,
as my students and I discovered through online and face-to-face
surveys, people have multiple perspectives regarding bullying in
real and virtual spaces—from innocent blindness to passive
acceptance to active rejection to passionate activism. This
spectrum of understanding suggests that we need to inspire people
to be reflective, and as demonstrated on MTV’s If You Really
Knew Me, people need to understand that loneliness and pain
are universal feelings and portholes to empathy, not signs of
weakness worthy of exploitation. Education can help, but it needs
to be widespread and include communication and partnership among
parents, teachers, and students. And, most of all, the
education and discussion regarding bullying and cyber bullying need
to become an ongoing, integrated part of school and family cultures
so that ethical judgment, active consideration, and kindness to
others become ingrained practices.
[i] For more, see:
Bullying. (December 2008).
Caslon Analytics. Retrieved from http://www.caslon.com.au/cyberbullyingnote3.htm
Tiatorio, A. (April 2010). Ethics in the
news: Unlearning bullying. The Sun Chronicle. Retrieved
from
http://www.thesunchronicle.com/articles/2010/04/08/columns/7123079.txt
[ii] For more, see:
Fisher, E. (September 2009). The bully in
pigtails: Girls and bullying. Intent. Retrieved from
http://www.intent.com/erikfisher/blog/bully-pigtails-girls-bullying.
Graham, S. (2010). What educators need to
know about bullying behaviors. Phi Delta Kappan,
92(1),66-69.
Phillips, D.A. (2007). Punking and
bullying: Strategies in middle school, high school, and beyond.
Journal ofInterpersonal Violence, 22(2),
158-178.
If you would like to get in touch with Dr. Abrams about her work,
you can e-mail her at: abramss@stjohns.edu.