Anti-Bullying Lesson - Follow-Up #2

Sent this out today (tried calling between lessons and Sick Monkey but ended up with voicemail):
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Hi [Curriculum Office Specialist]! CrunchyProgressiveMusicMama here - I left a voicemail at the curriculum office as well in between other stuff going on here (I teach private lessons out of my home AND I have a sick 3rd-grader home with me today), but I wanted to follow up in writing.

A couple of weeks ago, my younger daughter was working pretty diligently on a self-portrait, as directed by her classroom teacher. She's a pretty detail-oriented kid, so over the week they had to complete the assignment, she put a LOT of herself into this. Had I known that this would be used for the "crumpled paper" anti-bullying lesson, I never would have let her take it to school, not something that she probably invested 3-4 hours in (on top of the hour-plus it already takes her to do her homework nightly - but that's another kettle of smelly fish LOL) over the course of the week she worked on it.

So here is the aftermath: http://crunchyprogressivemusicmama.blogspot.com/2013/11/anti-bullying-lesson-really.html

Anti-Bullying Lesson - Follow-Up

Wow - that last post about the anti-bullying lesson my third-grader's class undertook sure did get a lot of views, and lots of commentary on the Facebook side as well. I have yet to hear from one person who didn't find the lesson "inappropriate" at best and "barbaric" at worst; most expressed anger and outrage, a few suggested phone calls to the principal/teacher. I did email the teacher but got limited joy on that front; I got some more details - which is good, because even with an impeccably honest but still-young child, parents are still going to hear more of that child's perspective of the experience than they are likely to hear an objective account, so I wanted to give the teacher the benefit of the doubt. He instead basically confirmed what Monkey had told me, with a few more details I could follow up on.

Another teacher who read my account of the incident and was less than impressed by the lesson kindly located it on the curriculum page and shared with me a cut-and-pasted copy of the anti-bullying lesson described here. To my surprise (and sadness), it is indeed included in the third-grade curriculum (not in a higher grade, as I'd half-hoped). Step-by-step instructions follow:

Anti-Bullying Lesson? Really?

A couple of nights ago as I was tucking in my youngest for bed, her face took on a serious expression. I've been around the block with this expression with both kids now, and when it happens at bedtime it inevitably means that there is something very deep on the mind of the child wearing the expression, and it also usually means that she needs to talk and unload and dialogue about it. And it inevitably happens at bedtime. :-) I used to be irritated at the delay in sleep for them and in "me/us" time for us parents, but I've come to love the close times and the thoughtful discussions that they seem to be most open to at these times, so I usually try to roll with it.

The week before, Monkey Child had been putting in a fair amount of time on a self-portrait that had been assigned by her third-grade teacher; one day the basic drawing, then some details, then some clothing, finally some color. And since Monkey is a very detail-oriented kid when it comes to her artwork, she put in a LOT of time over those few days to make it just so. She took it off to school and I didn't hear about it again until Monday evening at bedtime.

"Mom, we did something with our portraits in class on Friday," she said, quietly and seriously in the mostly-dark room, illuminated only by the rainbow that shines for 10 minutes after the main light goes off.

"Oooh, really?" I replied, curious to know how they'd been used.

"We used them for a lesson about bullying," she continued. "Each person in the class got someone else's picture to hold...." and suddenly my heart sank, hoping that I was NOT about to hear what I did indeed hear next.