Valentina Tafur

Social Problems

11-19-2020

Being a Claims-maker Project

Reflection Paper

Many people believe that bullying is just a school problem. They are wrong. Bullying is a social

problem and I will be explaining why I picked this topic and why this is a big social issue. A

bully isn’t born a bully. A bully is made and this is one of the main reasons why bullying is a big

social problem today. Some bullies are made at home, where they either see their parents or

sibling acting a certain way and they may acquire these actions themselves. Many of these are

traumatized at home because they are being bullied by their authority figures as well and this

may cause them to develop mental health disorders that leads them to act a certain way towards

others. Eventually they are by definition, bullies. This is the social problem I want to address

because I believe that the youth are the future of society and this may be bullied might impact

their lives forever. This issue isn’t only affecting the people who are being bullied, but we need

to find the deeper problem which is what is causing other kids to become bullies as well.

The first step in addressing a problem is to create awareness. This is what I intended to do

in this project. My plan was to get a hold of middle school principals so that they can hang up the

poster I created around the school. Studies have shown that the ages groups that kids are being

bullied the most are between the ages of 11-13 years old. This is why I picked middle schoolers

as my main target audience.

 With that being said, I presented this issue to the principal of one of the middle schools in

Dubuque and he said that he was happily to hang some posters around. This shows that authority

figures like him agree that this is an important issue. We don’t know how the kids will respond

to the posters or if anyone who is interested in knowing more about bullying will actually go on

the website. At lest they are more aware of this issue and the kids who are being affected directly

and know that they can get some help. I want the victims to know that this can stop.

Being a claims-maker was way harder than I expected. Being able to successfully do

something about the issue is very hard and it requires a lot research, planning and preferably

working with a team. I worked by myself, so it made it way harder. Changing the world is by

yourself is impossible. I believe that there has to be smaller changes in different communities so

that eventually we see changes all over the world. In the case of bullying, starting with local

school was the best option to trying to solve this social issue. Solving social issues can take

months or even years.