I kept one of my students back during my planning time today. Turns out there have been quite a few students who have been making fun of her concerning her weight. Of course, kids being kids, they are smart about where they do this at. They are doing this on the bus, and before school, when I am not around. I sat and held a ten year old girl as she cried like a baby in my arms about her weight, and the hurt that others were causing her.
We have thirty minutes after the students get back from their specials class before we go to lunch. I decided that we were going to have a class discussion about talking about people's weight. I have several overweight kids in my classroom. I would venture to guess that my students probably come close to meeting the national average for overweight kids. It was interesting listening to the things that they had to say. One kid (who was skinny) mentioned that sometimes skinny kids get picked on just as much. I acknowledged that this was not right either. I told the whole class how I used to be very overweight, and that knowing comments like this were occurring were very hurtful to me as well.
I want to write more about this, but for now I'm off to bed. I have a feeling this is not the last time I will have to address this issue this school year (or the years to come).
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