Patricia Sands

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bullying

April 8th~Are you in the pink today?

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What is the Day of Pink? ~ Please read this from the official website and go there to learn how you can help. Thanks for sharing this vital message.
April 8th, 2015 marks the International Day of Pink. It is a day where communities across the country, and across the world, can unite in celebrating diversity and raising awareness to stop homophobia, transphobia, transmisogyny, and all forms of bullying.

The International Day of Pink was started in Nova Scotia when 2 straight high school students saw a gay student wearing a pink shirt being bullied. The 2 students intervened, but wanted to do more to prevent homophobic & transphobic bullying. They decided to purchase pink shirts, and a few days later got everyone at school to arrive wearing pink, standing in solidarity. The result was that an entire school took a stand and began working together to prevent homophobic & transphobic bullying.

The message was clear: anyone can bully, any can be victimized by bullying, but together we can stop it.

Each year on the second Wednesday of April, millions of people wear pink and take a stand. The Day of Pink is a symbol, a spark, that empowers and inspires youth across Canada to create amazing social change!

Have you ever seen someone hurt because of discrimination? Have you been hurt yourself? Have you hurt someone? What are you doing to help bring about change? It’s up to all of us!

I’ve got my pink on. Do you?

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Sad …

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I don’t want to post this. I don’t want to talk about this again. However I know we have to keep the conversation going. Bullying. Are we making any progress? This week in Canada another teen took her life as a result of bullying. What a heart-breaking tragedy. No one has the right make someone’s life so miserable.

Seven weeks ago Amanda Todd posted this video on YouTube. How is it possible that  our system failed her?

A memorial fund has been set up through the Royal Bank of Canada and donations may be made at any branch. I wasn’t able to find an online link at this point.

In  just ten days, we should all be talking about the International Stand Up Against Bullying Day. This year October 26th is the designated day. One day is is not enough though – we need to speak out about bullying at every opportunity.

Click here to read the post I wrote about that day last November with all sorts of links to helpful sites. Everything I said then I will be saying again. I hope when we all write and speak about the fight against bullying that … sometime …  somewhere … somehow … some of us are helping to make a difference.

When I read about a situation like Amanda’s, it makes me sad … and angry … and determined to urge everyone to make even more of an effort to speak out against bullying. It simply shouldn’t happen!

The poster below offers a simple message we can share with everyone. Please pass it on. Please raise your voice and ask a young person you know to do the same. We all know bullying is not just an issue amongst young people but in this instance let’s focus on them. They are the future after all and the world needs to become a better place. Thanks!

Follow-up on BULLY-have you seen it yet?

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The jury is still out judging from the wide range of opinions in reviews for Lee Hirsch’s “Bully”, otherwise known as “The Bully Project”.
I have to admit I was a little disappointed but still feel it’s an extremely important film for adults and teenagers to see. Every school should incorporate this film into its programming  even though some of the school staff in the movie are shown to be dismally ineffective. The issue of bullying is one we all need to repeatedly bring into focus and work towards ending.
IMHO, the demographic studied in the documentary should have been more far-reaching  in order to impact a wider audience. This was a great opportunity to make a tremendously powerful statement and somehow it didn’t quite achieve what I had hoped.
Here are some other opinions:
The Bully Project is an intense, heartbreaking movie that every parent and school official should see. Kids may be kids, but abusers are taught. Here’s hoping this movie will have a positive effect and not just be ignored like the kids it’s trying to help. – Click here for the full review. FilmSchoolRejects.com
 But it also reveals Hirsch and Dwyer’s real priorities. Their victims cannot be empowered but rather pitied for their status as social pariahs. Difference is not a good thing in “Bully” but rather a frail quality and a mark of outcasts everywhere. The good intentions of everyone involved in making “Bully” don’t matter when the underlying logic to their film is so latently disparaging. Read the full review – Indiewire.com The Playlist
“Bully,” Lee Hirsch’s moving and troubling documentary about the misery some children inflict upon others, arrives at a moment when bullying, long tolerated as a fact of life, is being redefined as a social problem. “Just kids being kids” can no longer be an acceptable response to the kind of sustained physical and emotional abuse that damages the lives of young people whose only sin is appearing weak or weird to their peers. Read the full review here – NY Times.
I went to see BULLY today with some of my favourite people: our daughter, May and two of our granddaughters, Jessica, 11, and Megan, 13, along with a friend of theirs, Lucie, also 13. Over a post-movie lunch, we had a great gab about the movie and bullying in general.
I asked the girls to e-mail me some of their thoughts. I’ll qualify this by saying they  attend a small private school where a great deal of energy is spent focusing on community and respecting differences. As a former teacher, I firmly believe every classroom should share that focus in schools large or small, public or private. It can be done. Does it take work? YES. Is it effective? YES.
Lucie and Megan – We thought seeing the movie was a good experience because it opened our eyes. At our school there’s hardly any bullying so neither of us have really been bullied. Seeing the movie, it was hard to believe the amount of bullying taking place regularly and the huge impact it has on kids. The most shocking part is that often the school staff either doesn’t know about what’s happening, or doesn’t do anything about it. The number of kids that have committed suicide because of bullying is crazy and completely unnecessary. It’s horrible to think the families of some kids getting bullied don’t even know it’s happening. People getting bullied need to speak up in order for it to get better. We’re glad we saw the movie because it helped us understand the affect bullying has on kids of all ages. At times, Bully got repetitive – it could’ve had a wider variety of families/backgrounds. We’d recommend people see it though, because it gives you a whole different perspective of bullying and how serious it is.

Jessica – I found the movie very sad just because it’s terrible to think that these things actually happen and kids actually take their own life because of what others do to them. I cried A LOT during the movie because I feel like these kids are innocent and they just feel alone because the movie even showed how the parents and teachers really didn’t do much. If I were to change some parts of the movie to make it better, I would make it so that some child counsellor could maybe talk a little about why children bully. Also the ending of the movie seemed unfinished, and it seemed like they didn’t really come up with a solution. 

 
It’s very hard to think of ways to stop bullying because we’ve already done so much to try. Something some schools could do like we have at ours is have the teachers talk to the students about how wrong bullying is on a regular basis. I think this would really help because even though the bullies know what they’re doing is wrong, talking to them and making sure they know it’s unacceptable, how much trouble they could get into and how much damage it can do to the person getting bullied.
 
Overall I think Bully was a very good lesson. I would recommend this movie for children around age 10-16, but it’s good to let anyone know about how stupid bullying is.
Have you seen BULLY yet? What are your thoughts? Are you aware that your schools are working effectively to combat this unacceptable behaviour? You know I love to hear from you so leave a comment and share your thoughts. Thanks!

What’s your take on this?

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WHICH MOVIE WOULD YOU SAY IS MORE IMPORTANT FOR A TEENAGER TO SEE?

THE BULLY PROJECT

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjjeHeAzZZM

THE HUNGER GAMES

Why not make this deal with the moviegoers in your life?  If you go see The Hunger Games you will see The Bully Project too.  If you only choose one movie to see in the near future, make it The Bully Project.

Let’s support this important global message. Every person deserves to feel safe.