C.A.R.E. workshops took place all day on March 13 in 4 classrooms on campus.
The “C” is for compassion, “A” is for acceptance, “R” is for respect and “E” is for empathy. These concepts formed the main discussion subjects throughout the workshops.
ASB Commissioner of Cultural Diversity Anjali Bajaj was in charge of planning the event.
Caron Brownlee, Tom Duffy, Charla Powell and Nathan Ward were the teachers who chose to have the workshops take place in their classrooms.
These workshops had been called “tolerance” workshops in previous years. “I heard someone talking in the hallway about they could tolerate someone if they had to and I realized that it needed to go above just tolerating,” said Bajaj.
Bajaj said that she received a lot of negative feedback from last year, which led her to change things up. “There will be a lot more discussing and talking about things with less questions,” she added.
Bajaj recently found an article about a rape that happened at a high school in Utah in August in which the witnesses refused to come forward because the rapists were on the football team. “It will allow us to talk about bullying and staying silent,” she added.
Senior Jessica Tuan participated in the workshop and believed they went really well. “I though it was a good reminder that we need t0 acknowledge tolerance. The personal stories were good and made things more realistic,” she said. Tuan believed her classmates enjoyed the workshops and thinks that progress will be made, just not immediately.
Leadership students were in charge of running the workshops and according to ASB Commissioner of Social Affairs Hailey Finanne, they first practiced with classes at Joaquin Moraga on March 1. “We started with a ‘step forward’ activity and then talked about statistics dealing with national intolerance,” Finanne explained.
“I feel like the idea is right, but there was not enough discussion to fully bring it around for students here,” Finanne said of their practice run.
“It was a good start to bringing tolerance to campus,” said Sophomore Class Treasurer Toni Finanne.
According to Bajaj, there will be an assembly later on in the year to compliment the classroom workshops.
