Do you know the difference between a bystander and an upstander? A bystander is someone that does not speak up or act when they see acts of intolerance taking place. They just go about their business.  An upstander is someone who takes action when they see an act of intolerance take place. Remember, to be an upstander you do not have to even say a word your actions can be as simple as not laughing at someone or holding someone’s hand to show support.  So are you a bystander or an upstander?

Today we started a unit on tolerance.   We looked at the The Southern Poverty Law Center and found a definition of tolerance that we really liked.  Here it is:

Tolerance is respect, acceptance, and appreciation of the rich diversity in our world’s cultures, our forms of expression and the ways of being human.  Tolerance is harmony in difference.

As an introduction Mrs. McKillop gave some of the students in the class candies in gold wrappers, and the other students candies wrapped in silver wrappers.  We then got to eat our candies.  That was the really good part.  But then Mrs. McKillop said that the gold wrapper students could give their wrappers to the kids who go candy wrapped in silver.  The silver wrapper kids had to throw the garbage away even though they didn’t create all of the garbage.

Many of the kids who had silver wrappers used words like betrayed, disrespected, awful and unequal to describe how they felt.  The kids in the gold wrapper group used words like relieved, in control, unpleasant and like royality to desctribe how they felt.

We thought it was a good introduction in to the theme of tolerence versus intolerence. Mrs. McKillop then challenged us to find examples of tolerance and intolerance for out bulliten board. 

Tomorrow we are going to learn about the Japanse Interment Camps.

Have you ever expereince intolerance or tolerance?