August/September

The Muslim Ummah is spread throughout the world yet we are all equal in the eyes of Allah. The student population at the Masjid Bilal Weekend School comes from many areas of the world. Therefore, to celebrate the diversity shared by our current and future students we will be using diversity as our theme for the 2020-21 school year. Multicultural education teaches people to acknowledge, embrace, and respect difference. Multicultural education helps teachers come to terms with personal, cultural, and ethnic identity while simultaneously encouraging and providing settings for students to come to terms with their own culture and ethnicity. This will allow for our students to have a strong since of self, understand each other, and teach greater understanding and respect for those that are different from themselves. 

Why, greater understanding of the world around us and ourselves reduces tension, ignorance, and stereotypes. Over time it will also lead to a reduction in prejudicial thoughts, actions, and speech. Leading to an overall reduction in bullying and violence. Prejudicial behavior is a learned behavior and can also be unlearned, no matter the age.

Bullying sometimes involves negative comments about a student's personal attributes and how they are different from other students. 

These negative judgements can relate to:

· appearance & weight

· socio economic status

· ability & disability

· gender

· culture & race

Prejudice-based bullying, also sometimes called bias-based bullying, is bullying related to prejudices that students absorb from the wider social community about the value of diversity in a community. 

Students from a culture, race or religion that differs from the main culture, race or religion at the school are also more likely to be bullied. 

Student bullying is strongly linked to school climate, including how openly difference and diversity are discussed and how much value is placed on respect for diversity and inclusion. Celebrating diversity in schools is the first step towards improving acceptance within society. Teaching children about difference and diversity builds a strong foundation of understanding and provides a set of values that children can take with them throughout life.