"gender variant" "gender nonconforming" "gender spectrum" "parenting" Archives - Page 11 of 21

7: Coach Z

May 21, 2011 by Sarah

This is the seventh post in a series about my son’s recent experience with bullying at school.

One day last week Sam’s PE teacher, Coach Z, came up to me and said that there is a girl, Janette who is picking on Sam relentlessly, laughing at Sam and making nasty comments. She just won’t stop, he told me. I asked him to separate them, and he said he already had.

The next day, Sam came home and said that because Janette had been moved so far away from Sam that she could no longer say anything to him without being overheard, she started throwing balls at his head.

We emailed Coach Z. We emailed Sam’s teacher. We emailed the principal. We waited for nothing meaningful to be done.

And you know what? Coach Z sent us an email the next day saying he’d launched an anti-bullying program in PE.

He said that this isn’t just an issue between Sam and Janette. He said that bullying involves a bully-victim-bystander relationship, and sent us online links so we could learn more about this concept. And he said that he would conduct classroom sessions using the curriculum from BrainPOP to increase all students’ awareness of how to avoid bullying in PE. “If someone is ignoring bullying and not taking action,” Coach Z said, “they are no different from the bully.”

He also talked about how Sam can make better choices about engaging in a bullying situation, and suggested things we can talk to Sam about to facilitate his learning.

Coach Z doesn’t know we’re organizing parents and trying to get the school to implement a comprehensive anti-bullying program. He didn’t get the principal’s approval to launch a new program. He didn’t consult anyone. He just said: enough. I’m going to do something about this. And he did.

I love you, Coach Z.

Taylor Swift Makes Me Smile

May 15, 2011 by Sarah

We interrupt our regularly scheduled programming to bring you this breaking news:

Taylor Swift is awesome.

The Grammy-winning country-pop star’s new music video, Mean, makes a powerful anti-bullying statement, spinning a tale about kids who were picked on at school—including a pink boy who was terrorized by the football team—growing up to be happy, strong, successful adults.

I needed a dose of happy-outcomes-are-possible, having just read a Psychology Today article about how childhood bullying leads to adult PTSD. Just listening to Mean makes me feel lighter. Swift sings:

Someday I’ll be living in a big old city
And all you’re ever gonna be is mean

Someday I’ll be big enough so you can’t hit me
And all you’re ever gonna be is mean

Her sentiment may be somewhat simplistic and retaliatory—it’s not exactly Let’s teach everyone how to be the best person they can be—but she’s 21 years old, so I’ll cut her some slack. Plus her singing voice is gorgeous and I’ve been content to have her music run through my head all week.

And since you probably noticed that Taylor Swift has fabulous teeth, I’ll also mention the recent Trident Gum commercial in which a girl is putting makeup on her little brother.

It’s not nearly as awesome as The J. Crew Ad, because the mother looks kinda unhappy about the makeup situation, but I’m still enjoying that a big American company put a boy in makeup on TV. And that big American music stars are singing about boys like that.

So Taylor Swift, I like your teeth. I like your music. And I really like your message.

5: Counsel

May 12, 2011 by Sarah

This is the fifth post in a series about my son’s recent experience with bullying at school.

Last week, we went to see the school counselor.

We sat in his office and told him about how in addition to the kids who have bullied Sam for years, Sam has been harassed by an all new crop of kids recently. We said that our four years of requests for preventive anti-bullying curriculum—and offers of resources—have gone unheeded. We said the “radical kindness” the admissions director talked about on our school tour that was supposedly intrinsic to the school’s values is not radical at all; it’s retrograde.

We told him that we realize we now have three choices: leave the school, stay and tell Sam that’s he’s got to put up with it, or to stay and change the school.

And you know what our counselor said? He said it’s time to rally the troops. That we need to form an advisory counsel of parents to work with the school. That there is power in numbers. That this parent group can help look into best practices and find out what other schools are doing that’s really working to combat bullying. That he believes it’s essential that the school do this work.

Clearly, he said, the school needs something new, because whatever else has been tried is stagnant. Not just a program, he said, but something deeply and pervasively rooted in every aspect of the curriculum. He told us it’s time to find our allies among parents and on the faculty and staff, and to make something happen together.

He offered to let a group of parents meet in his office, and he offered to facilitate the meeting. We talked about letting the administration know, so we’re not doing anything behind their backs.

And then he added: “If this doesn’t resolve by next year, get the hell out.”

When a friend told us to start talking to other parents, I’d pictured some clandestine meeting of a few friends in our living room, to secretly organize some…I don’t even know what. Instead, the school counselor advised us to organize other parents, on a big scale, and to make our work public. And he said he’d host us.

A whole new world just opened up.

7: Coach Z

Taylor Swift Makes Me Smile

5: Counsel

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