This blog post talks about events that happened in Ted Lasso Season 3 Episode 5. Do not continue if you haven’t seen the episode.
Seriously, don’t keep reading…
Okay…here it goes…but I warned you.
Ted’s son did something to another student and it was deemed an act of bullying. The details of everything weren’t really given, hence the vague previous statement. Despite the lack of details, I found this interesting because the show made it seem like it was the first offense. Why is this so shocking? One would think a zero-tolerance policy on bullying is a good thing, right?
Absolutely, but did you know that this is not the case in all states? As a teacher, I witnessed what I deemed as a case of bullying, but upon talking with the administration, it was decided as a case of boys will be boys. I was informed that my state defines bullying as follows:
“‘Bullying’ means any aggressive and unwanted behavior that is intended to harm, intimidate, or humiliate the victim; involves a real or perceived power imbalance between the aggressor or aggressors and victim; and is repeated over time or causes severe emotional trauma. “Bullying” includes cyberbullying. “Bullying” does not include ordinary teasing, horseplay, argument, or peer conflict.”
In this event, there was nothing that the admin considered as “real or perceived power imbalance between the aggressor or aggressors and victim; and is repeated over time or causes severe emotional trauma.” To me, it was a case of humiliation but the incident didn’t check any other box and the big one that it didn’t check was over time. In my state, one time does not a bully make.
This is why I looked up Kansas’ DOE to see if there was essentially a zero-tolerance policy. There is one word that could cause an incident to be deemed not as bullying according to the KDOE and that’s persistent, which relates to the over-time aspect in my state. Now, this is my interpretation and I am by no means an expert of the law or of another state’s definition of bullying. So please don’t take this blog as some sort of gospel or legal interpretation, because it’s not. To be fair, I’m not an expert on that in my state either but I’m speaking through my experience as an educator.
So was this Henry Lasso’s first offense or was it reoccurring? Do we expect a TV show to be accurate? Should we be happy that Ted shed light on another one of our national issues?
To me, it was unclear if this was Henry’s first offense and I don’t expect a show to be accurate but Ted caused me to be CURIOUS (see what I did there Lasso fans). It is truly a great thing that Ted shed light on the bullying issue and how Henry apologized for what he did. So what’s the point of this post and how does it relate to Metal Like Me?
Metal Like Me was inspired by what I went through as a teacher and am hoping will be used to start a dialogue on a topic that we know is a problem.
D. W. Saur 