Today’s Brilliance from TJ Prodigy

1 in 6 students are bullied in school on a daily basis. I am one of those kids… or well, I was one of those kids.

This year I am being homeschooled, because I couldn’t take the bullying that I was going through in school any longer, and my school wouldn’t do anything about it. Unfortunately our teachers tell us to speak up and tell an adult when we are being bullied, but what happens when the adults don’t listen?

I’m only 12 years old but I’ve learned so much about people in the past few months. I’ve learned that sometimes, you can’t rely on adults to make your problems go away. We need to take things into our own hands and be leaders. As the kids, and the future generation of the world. Our world right now.

It’s not something I’m proud of. We live in a world today where turning on the news has become pointless because it’s filled with the same negative stuff every time. We have the power to CHANGE that. I mean what kind of world do we live in where a kid resorts to bringing a gun to school because he can’t take the hate and the teasing he goes through every day any longer?

There was this kid in my grade who was bullied a lot more than I was. He would sit at lunch alone everyday. And even though he was teased, you would still always catch him smiling. It makes me wonder if the people around him keep treating him so badly, if he’ll still be smiling in a few more years.

I sat with him at lunch one day, and talked with him. He was actually a really nice person, and we became friends after that. Yearbooks came out and there’s a picture of me and him, me with my arm over his shoulder and we are smiling all goofy. This is one of the things that I have learned matters. By taking a step out of the norm and sitting with this lonely boy, I made his day. And I also made a new friend.

Something that doesn’t matter? Popularity. Being “cool.” That’s why no one else sat with him. They thought it would make them uncool because so many kids teased him. What even is cool? Who decides who is cool and who isn’t cool?

I don’t understand why, when we would get to pick our own groups in Science class and I would go to join a group, one kid would say “Um, you are NOT in the group” and all the other kids would be quiet and agree with the other kid just because that kid was considered “cool.” Didn’t they realize that these things HURT? We need to step up and change this because if we don’t, no one else is going to.

I spend so much time every day talking to my fans on twitter and facebook about what they’re going through in school. What are we doing to each other? We need to stand together, and make change. This is our world, and these are our problems.

Don’t be the reason that someone else leaves too soon. The difference starts inside all of us. So make the difference.. 🙂