Teasing. Parroting ethnic slurs and other insults learned from their parents – doing so, in some cases, without fully understanding the meaning of the phrases they are uttering – or, in entirely too many instances, knowing full well that their words will hurt and demean their intended targets – as happened in the case of 14-year-old Bay Area resident Olivia Gardner, who came across a devastating “Olivia Haters” page posted on MySpace by her classmates at a Novato, California middle school: www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/03/17/MNGGEON77L1.DTL.
Excluding classmates from social activities. Isolating. Kicking. Punching. Tearing off a boy’s yarmulke or a girl’s hijab: http://digitaljournal.com/article/279038. Shoving pork into the faces of Muslim students: www.nea.org/home/42528.htm.
Kids being bullies, not kids.
As mentioned in an article yesterday by this Examiner, an alarming 50% of children are bullied during their school years.* School performance among many of these children is suffering, and in too many cases, children are also experiencing major clinical depression as fallout from the torment and trauma to which they have been subjected simply by trying to attend school or observe their religious or cultural practices.
“As adults, we have to be the ones to do something about it.... It’s really important for us to not allow bullying of any kind in schools.... Students can also be leaders in this way,” stated former First Lady Laura Bush in a 2010 ABC interview about the It Gets Better Project. (Click on video link on the left hand side of this column.)
Now, thanks to one San Jose-based educational non-profit, communities from across the Bay Area and beyond will have the opportunity to actively participate in making our world kinder and more compassionate by receiving training that enables them to stand up to bullies everywhere and say, “No more.”
Parents, teachers, children, and community leaders, including those from diverse Bay Area faith traditions are being invited to take part in free anti-bullying training sessions presented online on August 18 and 20, 2011 by the Islamic Networks Group (ING) in collaboration with the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) and Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC).
In part one of this training, Answering Difficult Questions about Islam and Muslims, participants will learn how to respond to questions that are frequently asked by children and adults that, while genuinely sincere, may be based on information that has been reported incorrectly in the news, or has been conveyed through the uneducated or unthinking repetition of stereotypes and other misconceptions.
In part two, Bullying Prevention Training, experts in the fields of education and bullying prevention will address the many different ways in which children are bullied, and will also provide tools for both children and the adults who guide them (parents, teachers, spiritual leaders, et. al.), to enable them to better respond to harassment and, ultimately, to stop bullying from happening in the future.
Maha ElGenaidi, the founder and president of ING and one of the presenters for these training programs, is well positioned to educate her fellow community members about bullying. She has contributed to federal research regarding the development of anti-bullying policies, and recently attended the White House conference on bullying response and prevention, during which President Obama made clear that the harassment and assaults experienced by children today are not simply examples of “kids just being kids”; they are damaging episodes that we must stop from happening: http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/white-house-turns-attention-bullying/story?id=13097724.
ElGenaidi, named by the San Jose Business Journal as one of the Silicon Valley’s 2010 Women of Influence, is an educator who regularly presents cultural competency training for schools, businesses, and other groups across our region: www.wisemuslimwomen.org/muslimwomen/bio/maha_elgenaidi/. She will be joined by Robyn Holstein-Glass, the executive director of Project Change (http://projectchange-md.org/about.php), et. al.
Part one of this two-part series will begin at 1:00 p.m. Pacific Time on August 18, 2011, and will last 90 minutes: http://ing.org/events/events.asp?num=1117. Part two, also a 90-minute program, will begin at 12:00 p.m. Pacific Time (noon) on August 20th: http://ing.org/events/events.asp?num=1118.
Note: Although both webinars are being presented free of charge, it is important to be aware when registering that you will need to select “check” as your method of payment. You will not be asked or required to send a check, but selecting "check" will permit you to complete your registration and will also enable you to access and download supplementary educational materials that will be made available to participants after each session. Prospective participants who need assistance or desire further information are encouraged to contact Sadaf Siddiq, the coordinator for these programs: sadaf@ing.org.
Based in the San Francisco Bay Area, the Islamic Networks Group (ING) is dedicated to fostering understanding of the world’s religions and to increasing and improving the quality of interfaith dialogue through programs for colleges and universities, corporations, K-12 schools, law enforcement agencies, healthcare facilities, and other organizations through programs such as its Interfaith Speakers' Bureau. This Speakers' Bureau trains Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Jewish, and Muslim presenters to deliver an average of 700 programs annually across the greater San Francisco Bay Area. For more information, please visit: www.ing.org/.
* Bullying – Facts for Families, American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry: www.aacap.org/galleries/FactsForFamilies/80_bullying.pdf.
Anti-bullying and Tolerance Resources:
It Gets Better:
www.itgetsbetter.org/MTV’s A Thin Line Campaign:
www.athinline.org/Stop Bullying.Gov:
www.stopbullying.gov/Teaching Tolerance – A Project of the Southern Poverty Law Center:
www.tolerance.org/teaching-kits
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