MARTHA PATRICIA AYALA MONSERRAT 3rd semester student LeDLI UJED

1. Silence screams: a bullying history
School life, this beautiful stage of the formation of the human been in almost all
aspects in their life, sometimes this experience seems to be a not entirely pleasant
for some people, for example there are those who have to face the changes
resulting from passing through the childhood to adulthood fighting whit their own
adolescent problems, sometimes they have to deal with another class of problems
as useless and antique educational programs, low self-esteem, bullying, or all of
them at the same time.
Unfortunately, these days, seems to be that human has lost its essence or its
capacity for empathy, because it‟s getting more and more common see cases of
bullying in the schools at all levels, and this is not a problem that only affect
students, teachers can also be victims of this alarming problem, causing havoc on
the educational level of the individual because it can actually cause the school
dropout, low self-esteem, and in extreme cases suicide.
That is why we decided to tackle this problem in our play in a kind of fun way to
capture the viewer's attention by talking about a very complex topic. The story
revolves around a family composed only by a mother and son who arefrom the
United States and come to Mexico to live, but once heenter the schoolhe suffers
bullying by their classmates, because all the energy of them is misdirected by their
teacher, whose teaching methods are quite outdated. So this guy, Waldo silently
suffered the bullying by his classmates and teacher.
The story begins when the mother called Rosemary, is doing the household
chores, and when her son arrives at home she realized that Waldo, a guy who‟s a
little bit too geek, arrives with a bad attitude at home, and when she asked him
what was happening, the exploits, because he says that he is tired of everything
and just want to be alone, because it was notorious that he was having problems
in school and that is whenhis mother begins to suspect that he is suffering bullying
at school. She gets worried, and seems that Waldo gets a little bit insane because
of that, because he only found some kind of refuge when he talks to a puppet,
which represents his conscience. Obviously, that behavior affects Waldo´s scholar
life, because according to Krashen‟sAffective Filter hypothesis, which embodies
the view that a number of 'affective variables' play a facilitative, but non-causal,
role in second language acquisition. These variables include: motivation, selfconfidence and anxiety, the last one was the notorious one in Waldo, because
there was a lack of motivation and self-confidence in him. Krashen claims that
learners with high motivation, self-confidence, a good self-image, and a low level
of anxiety are better equipped for success in second language acquisition. Low
motivation, low self-esteem, and debilitating anxiety can combine to 'raise' the
affective filter and form a 'mental block' that prevents comprehensible input from
being used for acquisition, and that was the Waldo´s problem, because like
Krashen said 'a mental block, caused by affective factors prevents input from
reaching the language acquisition device' (Krashen, 1985, p.100) in other words,

2. like Waldo‟s filter was „up‟ it was causing problems in his process of acquiring a
second language.
That‟s when Waldo‟s mom, desperate cause his son is not emotionally well,
sawon tv a spot of a talk show called “Lety sin censura”, in which was offers you a
solution to your case, so Rosemary decides to mark the program to find the
possible solution.
Then appears the talk show where the host LetyTocaMelo, begins to talk with
Rosemary and the teacher about the problems that Waldo is facing in school.
Since the very first moment that the teacher arrives to the set, she appear with an
attitude of disdain, which clearly shows that she opposes the change of any kind.
When Lety asks the teacher what she thought about this situation is when she, in
a manner somewhat superb explains that she had been teaching to her students
with the same method for 40 years and always had been working for her, and that
only by the arrival of the "gringo" she wasn't going to change her teaching
methods because in her classroom the students do what she said in the way that
she wants. In this part we saw a clearly ways of the classical teaching
approaches, because it seems that she teaches like if she was living on the 1910
or something, becauseBehaviorism puts the emphasis on external behavior of
people and their reactions on given situations, rather than the internal, mental
state of people.inbehaviorism, is primarily concerned with observable behavior, as
opposed to internal events like thinking and emotion, and also people have no free
will to do what they want to do, only what the teacher said. Because as we all
know by now, behavior is the result of stimulus – response because all behavior,
no matter how complex, can be reduced to a simple stimulus – response
association). Watson described the purpose of psychology as: “To predict, given
the stimulus, what reaction will take place; or, given the reaction, state what the
situation or stimulus is that has caused the reaction” (1930, p. 11).
Once the teacher finished arguing her teaching method, is when shown the
evidence video, in which appears Waldo suffering from Bullying in the classroom
by the hands of hisclassmates and his teacher, only because Waldo correct a
formula which is incorrect, but the teacher think is right, like in teacher centered vs
student centered where both think they‟re right.It´s clear that the teacher teaches
in the way that she believes is appropriate for all the group, regardless that a
classroom is a microcosm in which each person learns at their own rhythm. Here it
is notorious that the teacher wanted to have control, modifying the behavior of
students with sticks and carrots to have some control of the situation because
that‟s the only approach she knows to teach, just like Skinner do with some rats
to prove his view of conditioning, known as operant conditioning. His model was
based on the premise that satisfying responses are conditioned, while unsatisfying
ones are not. Operant conditioning is the rewarding of part of a desired behavior
or a random act that approaches it. Skinner remarked that "the things we call
pleasant have an energizing or strengthening effect on our behavior" (Skinner,
1972, p. 74).
Also was clear that the old method that the teacher was using, misdirected
students‟ energy turning it into anger that finally becomes into bullying.

3. It would be better if the teacher follows the example of the zone of proximal
development by Vygotsky. Because according to this theory the student develops
while interacting with the world: parents, teachers, and friends. The student later
internalize this interaction and develop his own cognitive skills. In this regard it is
very important to guide the student through the process but at the same time to be
careful not to over imposethe guidance, like the teacher do with the students,
causing them only more problems.
When all the evidence showed up, Lety ask for an opinion from the public, and
that´s when „the naca‟ said to the teacher that she have to be more
comprehensible with Waldo, because he‟s in the process of acquiring a new
language, but seems that she don´t listen anything of what she said to her. Then,
Lety told the teacher that she have to change their teaching methods, because
time have changed and their methods must change too, also that she leave behind
her paradigms and use the new technologies in classroom.
The last part of our presentation happens three months later than the first show.
Here we can see the teacher suffered a radical change in her teaching methods,
because she went from the behavioral approach, to the cognitive approach,
because the video shown in this part shows that there are interaction in an
appropriate manner between shows the students and the teacher, most
importantly, the abuse that Waldo suffered stay in the past, because the methods
that the teacher was using were the correct one, the energy of the students was
focused only on scholar chores.
According with this, in our work we shown a painful subject, but real, in which are
involved both students and teachers, some of them for not giving classes in a
proper way, and students for not having enough control over all the energy they
have.
This problem was solved when the teacher change her teaching approach,
because she goesfrom behaviorism to cognitivism for the good of the students.
Another way that this situation could have been solved was applying the
constructivist approach,because constructivist teachers encourage students to
constantly assess how the activity is helping them gain understanding. By
questioning themselves and their strategies, students in the constructivist
classroom ideally become "expert learners." This gives them ever-broadening
tools to keep learning, so that students were able to aprener his own turning them
a bit more independent way; or applying some Gardner‟s intelligences during the
classes, so the students can be able to use all their senses so they can be able to
build a meaningful learning.

4. LICENCIATURA EN DOCENCIA DE LENGUA INGLESA
3RD SEMESTER
FINAL PROJECT:
ESSAY
“SILENCE SCREAMS: A BULLYING HISTORY”
BY:
MARTHA PATRICIA AYALA MONSERRAT