article via bbc.com
A Brazilian teacher has come up with a unique way to help a schoolgirl who was being bullied because of her hair.
Ana Barbara Ferreira, from Sao Paulo, Brazil, said her student was “sad” after being ridiculed by a boy, who had said her hair was “ugly”. “At that moment, the only thing I could tell her was that she was wonderful and shouldn’t care about what he was saying,” she wrote in a Facebook post that went viral. A bigger show of support came in the following day, when she went to work wearing the same hairstyle as her pupil, much to the girl’s surprise.
“When she saw me, she came running to hug me and say that I was beautiful,” Ms Ferreira said. “I told her: ‘Today I’m beautiful like you!'” She posted a picture on Facebook of her with the pupil – both smiling and with similar hairstyles.The teacher has been widely praised on social media. Her post has been liked by more than 142,000 people and shared 30,000 times.
Ms Ferreira said: “Yesterday, my student told me there was a boy saying that her hair was ugly. She was very sad. At that moment, the only thing I could tell her was that she was wonderful and shouldn’t care about what he was saying.
“Today, I woke up and remembered what happened and decided to wear the same hairstyle she used to wear. When she saw me, she came running to hug me and say that I was beautiful, and I told her: ‘Today I’m beautiful like you!’.”
Source: Brazil teacher changes hairstyle to support bullied girl – BBC News
Posts tagged as “Afro Puffs”
Seven-year-old Natalie McGriff earned $16,423.69 in prize money for creating her comic book “The Adventures of Moxie Girl” at Jacksonville, FL’s One Spark, touted as the world’s largest crowdfunding festival.
McGriff’s comic book revolves around the life of a little Black girl who hated her hair texture. After using some magical shampoo, the little girl’s afro-puffs are activated with super powers that helped save the Jacksonville Public Libraries from being eaten by monsters.
McGriff’s mother, Angie Nixon, helped her daughter write her comic book “because she was having self-esteem issues regarding her hair and she hated to read.”
“She now realizes how powerful and awesome her hair is and that in order for her to write a cool book, she needs to read more books and learn different words,” she continued.
Over 530 projects competed for One Spark 2015, and 300,000 people attended the festival. McGriff was the winner of the Education category; there were 117,169 votes cast by attendees. One Spark is a five-day festival and one-day Speaker Summit. Creators from six categories (Art, Education, Health & Science, Music, Social Good and Technology) explain their projects to a crowd of over 250,000 people and are able to experience the crowdfunding for their project in person. The attendees contribute to crowdfunding campaigns and vote to distribute $150,000 of the guaranteed $350,000 in awards.
article by Lauren R.D. Fox via madamenoire.com
An Ohio high school has agreed to remove part of its dress code after parents complained it was discriminatory. In the dress code sent out to parents June 14, Horizon Science Academy (HSA) noted that “Afro-puffs and small twisted braids–with or without rubberbands–are NOT permitted.”
After receiving a number of complaints, the school sent out an updated dress code Saturday, removing the Afro-puffs ban. The school’s dean of students Jayson Bendik issued an apology for anyone offended by the dress code, noting the inclusion as an error. “We had no intention of creating any bias,” Bendik said. “We made a mistake and we fixed that mistake immediately.”
Bendik noted that other concept schools have been informed of the change. According to him, a committee oversees the dress code for the school, but overlooked the ban. “As soon as we found out, we took the necessary action and made a correction,” he said. According to its 2011-2012 annual report, 26 percent of the school’s K-7 students are African-American.
James Knight, an advisory-board member for the school, said the ban was targeted at the school’s Black male students in an effort to improve their appearance. “It had nothing to do with young ladies, young African-American ladies. It was really more so addressing young African-American men here at this school,” he told the Huffington Post. “We want to maintain a certain type of college prep culture here, and we just want the young men to be well-groomed.”
“This information has offended many people and by no means did we have any intention of creating bias toward any of our students,” a member of the HSA administration told The Morning Journal. “Furthermore, we are taking the matter seriously and again apologize for any offense it may have caused.”
article by Hannington Dia via newsone.com