As a teacher, camp director, and now as a principal, Mrs. Weiner watched this cycle play out over and over — until she couldn’t stand it any longer. It was time to act
M
indy enters the lunchroom, eager to sit down and relax over her salad and iced coffee. It’s been a long morning, and there’s an afternoon ahead too. She heads for a table where many of her classmates are sitting and is about to take a seat at the only empty spot when Esti says, “Oh, sorry, Mindy — I’m saving that seat for Perel.”
Mindy flushes with embarrassment. She mumbles something and looks around for another seat, but no one seems to notice. She finally sits down at an empty table, hoping someone will join her soon, and pulls out her salad. But she’s lost her appetite.
Social exclusion is all too common in schools, camps, and any other social setting. And it’s so often inadvertent! Surely Esti didn’t mean badly — she was just saving a seat for her friend Perel. But Mindy is left feeling alone, rejected, and shamed — something Esti and her other classmates had never intended.
“When it comes to this kind of subtle exclusion, when we see girls in our schools struggling socially, we often miss the point,” says Mrs. Dassi Weiner, a principal at Yeshivas Toras Emes Academy in Los Angeles. She’s noticed a lot of attention given to cases of bullying or to teaching social skills to struggling students. But sometimes there’s a different problem. “So many girls are not actually bullies but just never include someone else into their group,” Mrs. Weiner explains. “And most of the girls who end up on the sidelines have no problem with social skills — 80% or 90% are simply just suffering because of the ‘clique mentality’ of their classmates.”
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