Don’t Be a Bully, Be a Buddy | Corona, CA

bullyingNo one wants to be bullied, yet it seems like bullying is becoming more and more an issue in schools. Before you let you or your buddy become a victim, kit is important to know that there is something you can do. There are things you can do to keep yourself and the kids you know safe from bullying. No one should have to feel alone…

Stick with friends. There is safety in numbers. Avoid being alone in target areas like locker rooms, restrooms, and places where the bully hangs out.

Be assertive and confident. Use body language to show you are not afraid. Stand up straight and make eye contact.

Ignore the bully. Walk away. Don’t respond. Get out of the situation. Agree with the bully’s comments, then walk away.

Don’t seek revenge. Remember that using violence to solve problems only makes things worse.

Get help. If you are being bullied, don’t keep it a secret. Report all bullying incidents to friends or adults.

Don’t be a bystander. When no one speaks up, bullies learn they can get away with it.

Refuse to join in. Don’t take part in the bullying. Refuse to even watch.

Speak out. Distract the bully by changing the subject or using humor. Stand up for the victim. Tell them to stop.

Give support. Be a friend. Make an effort to include others who are normally left out or rejected.

Get an adult. Report any bullying you see to teachers or other adults. They can set clear, nonviolent consequences for future bullying behavior. Your friends can go with you to talk to a teacher, counselor, coach, or parent, in case you’re nervous to go alone.

If you would like to learn more about bullying prevention, contact Simple Acts of Care and Kindness at 866-459-7225 or visit www.simpleacts.org for additional information.

The History of Seth’s Law | Corona, CA

bullyingIn the current climate, it’s fitting that we take a moment to reflect on a law passed in California that protects public school children from bullying. That law? Seth’s Law. Seth’s Law is a 2012 law that strengthens existing state anti-bullying laws to protect all students. This law requires CA public schools to update their anti-bullying policies and programs, focusing on protecting students who are bullied based on their actual or perceived sexual orientation and gender identity/gender expression, as well as race, ethnicity, nationality, gender, disability, and religion.

California law says that all public school students should have equal rights and opportunities. Yet many lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning students report that they experience significant bullying in California schools. And teachers, administrators, and other staff often fail to address the bullying when they see it.

Seth’s Law is named after a 13-year-old California student who tragically took his own life in 2010 after years of anti-gay bullying that his school failed to address.

Under this law, school districts will adopt a strong anti-bullying policy that prohibits bullying and implement a specific process for receiving and investigating complaints of bullying, including a requirement that school personnel intervene if they witness bullying. Additionally, publicize anti-bullying policy and complaint process, including support materials in all schools, offices and district websites.

Seth’s Law specifically contains the following requirement: “If school personnel witness an act of discrimination, harassment, intimidation, or bullying, he or she shall take immediate steps to intervene when safe to do so.” (Education Code Section 234.1(b)(1))]

If you would like to learn more about Seth’s Law and what you can do to prevent bullying, contact Simple Acts of Care and Kindness at 866-459-7225 or visit www.simpleacts.org for additional information.

4 Simple Solutions We All Can Do To Stop Bullying | Corona, CA

Kids in classBeginning to foster a culture of caring, respect, and awareness starts with a few simple steps that make the biggest change:

1. Increase Your Own Awareness

Realizing when bullying is taking place is a necessary first step in finding solutions. By understanding the scope and roots of the problem, you will get an idea of how to start proactively working to address bullying, including teasing, name-calling, shunning, and physical intimidation or assault. Does your school, sports club, or youth group create a culture of respect, caring, and safety for everyone? Are children appropriately supervised during recess periods, lunch and before and after school?  Do educators have adequate support and training for addressing bullying?

2. Respond Forceful and Respectfully

If you see bullying take place or hear about it, remember that your reactions provide a context for how the kids involved will respond to and interpret the situation. Kids need to see adults being powerful and respectful in responding to problems. If parents or teachers get upset and overreact, kids are more likely to get upset and might even avoid telling adults about future problems. Staying calm, respectful, and persistent will make you more effective in talking to administrators, educators youth group leaders, or parents about their response to a bullying problem. Not everybody reacts in a helpful way when first approached so be prepared to persist.

3. Teach Your Kids Protective Skills

Positive peer relationship skills help to prevent and stop bullying. Tell your children that they have the confidence and power to walk away from any situation. Making safe choices like stepping out of a line or changing seats is sometimes all that is needed to make a bullying problem stop. Ensure that your child is persistent in getting help and is prepared to continue to ask for help even if an adult does not respond immediately.

4. Become Involved

Know what other parents and adults in your community are doing to stop bullying. Insist that your child’s school has a mandatory district-wide anti-bullying policy and educates their staff on diffusing and recognizing all forms and types of youth bullying. Write to your county- and state-level officials telling them of the seriousness of bullying and demand they make it a top priority in their campaigns.

If you would like to learn more about bullying and what you can do to prevent it, contact Simple Acts of Care and Kindness at 866-459-7225 or visit www.simpleacts.org for additional information regarding bullying.

Making Friends in the New School Year | SACK of Corona, Ca

Two young male friends at a playground smiling

Going back to school can spark many emotions. Excitement for a new school year, wondering what the new school year will bring, seeing old friends and finding your way around a new class, schedule, or school. Along with that comes making new friends, a lot of us find it hard to make new friends and it can be a challenge to know ‘what to do’ to meet a new person. Below we’ve pulled 15 Tips on how to make new friends from http://www.thefriendshipblog.com. Read them below!

1) Smile

Smiles make you seem friendly and approachable. They make others feel special.

2) Make eye contact

When you look people in the eye, they feel like you’re interested in them and what they are saying. People like being respected.

3) Say hello

Greet classmates you haven’t talked to before—even if you’re shy, even if the person seems intimidating, and especially if they’re in different groups than you. Hello is the first step toward making a new friend.

4) Reach out

Make a goal to talk to at least one new person a week. Some of the best friends arise from unexpected places and people.

5) Forget stereotypes

People (including you) are more than the group with whom they hang; they are more than the labels others give them. Don’t stereotype schoolmates by the groups they belong to and don’t limit yourself to your current group (if you are part of one).

6) Be involved

Volunteer at school in or the community. Join clubs or sports that interest you. Extracurricular activities are opportunities to meet others who like the same things you do.

7) Be better

You don’t have to be the same as you were last year. If you were shy, you can push yourself to be more talkative. If you were unfriendly, you can be nicer. The older you become, the more life experience you have, the better your social skills become. Use your maturity for your benefit.

8) Ask for advice

If you’re having trouble making friends or keeping friends, turn to people you respect. Seek out a parent, older sibling, teacher or school counselor to talk about your difficulties. They can give you helpful suggestions to solve your difficulties.

9) Be a good friend

Treat others the way you want them to treat you. Even if someone treats you poorly, try not to use that as a reason to return the negativity.

10) Be a good friend to yourself

Don’t talk more harshly to yourself than you would a friend. Nobody is perfect, even if they look that way on the outside. When you’re unkind to yourself, it shows in how you present yourself to the world. You deserve the kindness you give others.

11) Be trustworthy

Keep your friends’ secrets and confidences, no matter how tempting telling others might be. Gossiping may seem harmless at the time, but it causes hurt feelings and fights, and ends many friendships.

12) Be truthful

Lying might feel less scary, easier, or even better but more often than not, the truth eventually comes out and makes the situation much worse than if you initially told the truth.

13) Speak up

If you hear others talking negatively about a person or group, tell them you feel uncomfortable. If you see someone bring bullied or called names, stand up for the victim. Tell a teacher or someone in authority if the bullying doesn’t stop or if it’s a pattern. Keep telling until someone listens to you.

14) Apologize

If you hurt someone or mistakenly do something you shouldn’t have, a sincere “I’m sorry,” without excuses, is the first step to moving forward.

15) Relax

Nobody does friendship perfectly or knows exactly what to do when it comes to making and keeping friends. Do the best you can. Every new day is an opportunity to be better than you were yesterday.

Remember, always be yourself & enjoy the new school year!

For more information call us at 866-459-7225 or visit our website athttp://simpleacts.org

The Imagine Dinner | SACK Corona, CA

Imagine dinner invitationPlease join us for our first Annual Imagine Dinner to honor the special members of our community. We will be honoring their selfless acts of care and kindness on September 29th, 2015 from 6:00pm-8:00pm at Crossroads Christian Church in Corona.

Individual Tickets are only $15, but if you’d like the opportunity to be a sponsor you have that option as well. There are three types of sponsorship opportunities which include Visionary Sponsor, Fantasy Sponsor, or Creative Sponsor. If you decided to be a sponsor you will get recognition throughout the Imagine Dinner and your businesses logo will also be featured on the SACK website through June 2016.

So come honor all of our sponsors, while also raising awareness to help prevent and stop bullying! Even the simple act of showing up makes a difference all in its own! We hope to see all of our supporters there, because together we can make a difference.

If you have any questions regarding The Imagine Dinner feel free to contact Shirley Zink at 714-473-7887. 

Imagine Dinner Sponsor

Take a Stand against Bullying |

Bullying is aggressive behavior that is intentional and involves an imbalance of power or strength. It is a repeated behavior and can be physical, verbal, or relational. While boys may bully others using more physical means; girls often bully others by social exclusion. Bullying has been part of school, and even workplaces, for years. More recently, though, technology and social media have created a new venue for bullying that has expanded its reach. Cyberbullying is bullying that happens online and via cell phones. Websites like Facebook, MySpace, Tumblr and Formspring allow kids to send hurtful, ongoing messages to other children 24 hours a day. Some sites, such as Tumblr and Formspring allow messages to be left anonymously.

Preventing and stopping bullying involves a commitment to creating a safe environment where children can thrive, socially and academically, without being afraid. APA recommends that teachers, parents and students take the following actions to address bullying.

Be knowledgeable and observant

Teachers and administrators need to be aware that although bullying generally happens in areas such as the bathroom, playground, crowded hallways, and school buses as well as via cell phones and computers (where supervision is limited or absent), it must be taken seriously. Teachers and administrators should emphasize that telling is not tattling. If a teacher observes bullying in a classroom, he/she needs to immediately intervene to stop it, record the incident and inform the appropriate school administrators so the incident can be investigated. Having a joint meeting with the bullied student and the student who is bullying is not recommended — it is embarrassing and very intimidating for the student that is being bullied.

Teach your child how to handle being bullied

Until something can be done on an administrative level, work with your child to handle bullying without being crushed or defeated. Practice scenarios at home where your child learns how to ignore a bully and/or develop assertive strategies for coping with bullying. Help your child identify teachers and friends that can help them if they’re worried about being bullied.

Don’t bully back

It may be difficult to not bully back, but as the saying goes, two wrongs don’t make a right. Try not to show anger or tears. Either calmly tell the bully to stop bullying or simply walk away.

Chris Colfer: How the Spotlight made him reflect on his Bullies


“When people hurt you over and over, think of them like sand paper. They may scratch and hurt you a bit, but in the end, you end up polished and they end up useless.” – Chris Colfer

Chris Colfer can be seen on the musically inclined TV show Glee. A show about a glee club full of diverse students who struggle to find their place in high school. Quirky, and sassy, Colfer’s character is a student who struggles to come out of the closet with fears of being tormented by his peers and other individuals at school. Similar to his real life high school experience, Colfer suffered countless amounts of bullying as an openly gay student at his high school. He told Entertainment Weekly: “I spent most of my time stuffed into lockers. Thank god for cell phones, or I’d still be in there.”

As his high school experience got worse, he eventually turned to home schooling as an escape from the torment. Flash forward a couple of years, and Colfer lands himself a starring role on the widely popular television show “Glee”. He gets cast as an individual that goes through the same issues as he did in high school, except this time, Colfer gets to experience it under spotlight. As apprehensive as he was to take in a role that would cause so much controversy, it’s safe to say that society has been opening its eyes over the last couple of years. The role of Kurt brought Colfer a sense of escape as he was finally able to let go of his high school years. He turned an incredibly bad situation from his past into fuel for a very successful life as an openly gay actor.

As of now, he poses as a role model for so many individuals dealing with bullying.

Bullying Prevention Techniques

Approximately 32 percent of students report being bullied at school. Bullied students are more likely to take a weapon to school, get involved in physical fights, and suffer from anxiety and depression, health problems, and mental health problems. They suffer academically (especially high-achieving black and Latino students). And research suggests that schools where students report a more severe bullying climate score worse on standardized assessments than schools with a better climate. Educators, Parents, Guardians, and Peers all around should be practicing techniques to help stop bullying.

Five Tips to Help Principals Prevent Bullying

Effectively addressing a bullying problem requires a culture change. A true culture change takes time, but a few key steps to help principals get started:

  • Practice What You Preach Don’t use your status as the school leader as the lever for change; instead, “listen before talking and reflect before acting” to ensure your staff feel valued (this is backed up by the NEA survey, which found an important predictor of adult willingness to intervene in bullying was their “connectedness” to the school, defined as their belief they are valued as individuals and professionals in the learning process).
  • Assess the Extent of the Problem Survey students, staff and parents to find out how much and what type of bullying is going, as well as where and when, to target prevention efforts.
  • Develop a School-wide Code of Conduct that reinforces school values and clearly defines unacceptable behavior and consequences. Empower bystanders — teachers and especially students — to help enforce it by training them to identify and respond to inappropriate behavior.
  • Increase Adult Supervision Most bullying happens when adults are not present, so make sure they are “visible and vigilant” in hallways, stairwells, cafeterias and locker rooms, as well as on buses and the way to and from school for students who walk.
  • Conduct Bullying Prevention Activities such as all-school assemblies, communications campaigns or creative arts contests highlighting school values to bring the community together and reinforce the message that bullying is wrong.

World Kindness Youth Conference (W.K.Y.C.) Celebrates 9 Years! | Corona, CA

simple acts of care and kindness

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Simple Acts of Care and Kindness kicked off its annual World Kindness Youth Conference again this year at Crossroads Christian Church.  This two-day event gets bigger and better each year and the singers, speakers and sensitivity camp exhibits were amazing!

A huge “Thank you” to all of our 4th graders and teachers who participated in the event as well as all of our volunteers who make this event happen.  We couldn’t do it without you.

The W.K.Y.C. was first held in 2004 and uses seminars and activities to help students learn the many areas of life into which care and kindness can be inserted. Seminars and discussion groups dealing with bullying and other relationship topics fill the morning. After lunch, students visit exhibitors who have come with messages about care and kindness for themselves (staying health with good food and physical activity), their family (anger management, safety, emergency procedures at home), their community (programs for the developmentally disabled, helping keep parks clean and green…), and their world (recycling, planting trees…).

Contact Simple Acts of Care and Kindness today at 866-459-7225 or visit our website for more information.

Simple Acts of Care and Kindness proudly serves Norco, Riverside, Lake Elsinore, San Bernardino, Eastvale and surrounding areas.