how many of you have been bullied in
your life at some point or the other can
I have a show of hands that’s a fair
number thank you for sharing did you
know that we can reduce the number of
instances of bullying and actually work
towards ending it with the way we’re
changing the way we educate our children
my name is Keeley Jai Kumar and I’m
gonna talk to you about bullying and how
we can effectively address bullying
through peace education now a year and a
half ago I was invited to teach a bunch
of children of grade four a
choreographed dance sequence as part of
their annual day program and these
children were a motley bunch you had
every kind the noisy ones the quiet one
the chatter boxes the mischief mongers
the ones that loved to read in a corner
and for some reason I still haven’t
figured out almost all of them loved
picking their nose now I did something
when I was handling these children that
I’m still guilty about and I tended to
gravitate towards the few that I assumed
had the energy to carry the dance
forward and so in the process I ignored
this tiny slip of a girl who almost
always stood at the back of the class
she was petite had a small frame had
glistening eyes oily hair and little
okra seeds for teeth she was a
Wallflower if you will now on the last
day after all our rehearsals had gotten
done I was sitting with the children
taking them through a few rules that
they had to remember before going on
stage and in the corner of my eye I
noticed a boy jostling this little girl
and in seconds she fell down almost
immediately a teacher swooped in from a
corner threw the boy aside and asked him
if he remembered her warning her telling
him not to do this again
which meant this had happened before I
drew the girl aside we sat down together
on a staircase and both of us wasn’t
communicating with words but a lot was
said in silence I asked her if she was
okay she nodded I asked if she wanted
water she shook her head and we sat
together for all of four minutes and in
the fourth minute when she got up to
leave I finally asked her the question
that had been niggling at the bottom of
throat does this happen to you every day
she turned around looked at me and held
my gears for all of a few seconds and
nodded almost imperceptibly and in that
second my heart sank as I watched her go
back to class I felt a sense of guilt
gripped me how could I let her go back
to him to an environment where she would
be subjected to bullying violence and a
constant messaging that would tell her
she was unworthy when I went back home
that day I went back with a sense of
dread the sense of disheartened ment of
human not only for what I had seen that
happened to the girl but also because
she set me back to when I was a child of
her age through my childhood as a high
schooler as a college student bullied in
one way or the other and she also made
me think in the way that children make
you think and there were so many
questions in my mind we have an
education system that is so busy making
economy worthy individuals individuals
who can add to the coffers of the world
but how many of them are human how many
of them have a sense of empathy so what
if what if when we teach our children
geography if we could walk the extra
mile and teach them that the world’s
many ethnicities are equal and none is
inferior or superior to the other what
if when we teach our children history we
stop a moment and tell them that the
words never again were actually uttered
for a reason what if when we’re teaching
our children the rules of grammar syntax
communication English whatever other
language we also slipped in a little
lesson on nonviolent communication and
taught them the art of empathetic
communication what if when we teach our
children the humanities sociology
anthropology psychology whatever we also
taught them the value of a bun – I am
Who I am because of who we are together
I spent a lot of time doing my own
research I had seen a problem I didn’t
want to be part of the problem I wanted
to be part of the solution with all the
research that I could find I put
together a curriculum of my own one
woman one laptop one big audacious dream
I wanted to end bullying I didn’t have
access to the same children that I
taught dance to for various reasons but
I picked the brain of a friend who often
talked to me about a class she taught
where bullying was a problem
particularly between a boy and a girl so
two weeks later I found myself with my
rudimentary curriculum in hand
smack Center with 20 children around me
said bully and bullied in tow now we
talk together we talked about themes of
non-violent communication of diversity
of mutual respect of tolerance of just
being Equalists and you know children
are also very smart they know how to
tell you exactly what you want to hear
and so I decided to be one step smarter
I decided that I would do a dip check
and get the children to share their
stories and I touched a raw nerve when I
brought the word bully up through the
entire session the girl that was bullied
remained quiet but when I asked them if
anybody wanted to share a story she was
the first one to put her hand up and so
I welcomed her to the center of the
class and please Mayer in mind that she
was incredibly quiet but this moment
with her she looked at everybody in the
eye and started sharing her story she
told everybody that she was from a
broken home her father was an incredibly
violent man he would beat her mother and
to save her mother this little girl
would find a way to force herself
between them sometimes being brutally
beaten shoved aside pushed and between
dressing with full sleeve clothes that
showing up in school and staying quiet
because processing all of this was
incredibly tough she became a victim of
her own silence and very easily the
victim of bullying and she didn’t stop
there she spoke to the bully straight on
and said when you do this to me you put
me in a terrible situation now somewhere
in the middle of this narration her eyes
had welled up but by the end of it she
was sobbing and through my own water
curtain of tears when I looked up at her
I also noticed from the corner of my eye
the boy that bullied her had gotten out
of his
it they took great strides towards her
and he gave her a hug I let the two of
them remain in that space just to share
that moment and when they broke the boy
asked me if he could share something now
with the consent of the girl to ensure
that she’d finishing and seeing what she
had to see I asked the boy to begin and
he said something that shocked me he
said he was going through the exact same
thing he was from a broken home his
father was incredibly violent he would
beat his mother and this boy to save his
mother would put himself in between the
two of them sometimes being beaten
shoved and pushed but the difference
here was that this boy had realized
something had been taken away from him
with his father’s violent wills
and he decided to Don the same cape to
take back what he had lost in that
session 21 lives changed the bully and
the bullied became the best of friends
and today pay forward with the learning
they gained to the very children of the
same age that they were at when they had
the realization 18 other children
understood how Sandow plays out in real
life that every face every name has a
story behind it and you walk the extra
mile to be compassionate about that and
the 21st person she started with one
dream and she has one story to share
with you today I went back home with all
of these ideas mulling over it thinking
about ways to operationalize this and
that night with my team at the red
elephant foundation
chalk piece was born we called it chalk
piece because we wanted to be PC
educators and the image of chalk almost
automatically conjures up all things
teaching but the difference was that we
were not going to teach we were not in
any way going to be the one standing to
maneuver a workshop we were going to
co-facilitate : walk the extra mile with
the students we were with and learn
along with them so with my curriculum we
got to do a bunch of programs across
different schools different programs
different initiatives and in each of
them one of the most common themes that
we understood
was that many of the children wanted to
have a means to stay engaged so that led
us to develop our curriculums in the
form of little books ebooks handouts
infographics that the children could
come back on our website and access and
that gave birth to a series of different
ideas that have now found their way onto
our website but while we did these
workshops we also recognized that many
of these children were coming from homes
that tended to reiterate the exact
opposite of what we taught them and so
it became incredibly important to
welcome the parents and the teachers and
every other sphere of influence that the
children were engaged with and so began
a new series of reinvented curriculums
that engaged a wider demographic and
then came a point in the entire journey
when we realized that chalk bees can
actually make a difference out of the
thousand children that we’ve worked with
we’ve been able to change over 600 lives
that actually reported to us out of the
remaining 400 there could be some that
we’ve changed they may not but 600 is a
good number to go with when I think of
chalk beasts and the numbers that we’ve
been able to convert I can’t tell you
that we’ve been successful enough in
changing the world we’re getting there
but it only makes me think of this one
beautiful story that I grew up learning
and I call it the starfish story there
was this man who was walking on the sea
shore and he found starfish being washed
ashore by the waves he would pick one up
throw it back into the water and kept
doing it for the entire time that he
walked on still on the shore another man
who was watching him walked up to him
and said what are you doing it’s not
gonna make a difference this man picked
up one more starfish threw it in the
water look the man in the eye and said
it makes a difference to this one thank you