Community Games Builds Confidence to Stop Bullying

The public is invited to attend the Community Games being held at Goddard Schools in Cumming, Alpharetta and across the country. The event this year promotes the prevention of bullying at the earliest ages.

"Kids will be working in teams with younger kids and older kids," said Landy Gonzalez, executive director of the . "And there's lots of dancing, because we like dancing."

She said current students and their parents, plus those who have visited the school have been directly invited to participate, but all of the community is welcome.

Gonzalez said in an age when everyone has been threatened by a bully at one point in their life, "the time to teach this lesson is now, when they are little."

The student body is like a walking United Nations, she said. Rather than always trying to blend cultures together, she said they teach children to stand apart and admire each other's difference. That helps with the bullying, she said.

But they do work to blend the kids together socially through activities. Those who attend the Community Games will see the kids play games with specific goals. One game has the children having to choose a friend and defend that friend as a goal.

Recognizing the damages that can happen to a child when they are young and that last a lifetime, the school teaches children how to stand up for themselves, and for someone else when they see another person being victimized.

"You'd have to walk around with a blindfold on your eyes not to see what happens in our parking lots and our environment, it's everywhere we go," Gonzalez said. "And unfortunately our children are witnessing it."

"Reading and writing is great. But raising compassionate children is really the message," she said.

The school takes the approach to learning and an emphasis on building self esteem and confidence in children to try to succeed in new challenges, said co-owner Shawn King.

"We believe that a confident child is much less likely to develop into a bully or to accept bullying from another child," he said.

The Community Games takes on a different theme each year, King said.

With the growing notoriety of bullying and how it's been in the news, he said Goddard School decided it was time for it to be the theme.

Opening ceremonies for the Community games will be at 9:30 a.m. on Friday, with closing ceremonies at 11:30 a.m.

"My wife and I own the , off of Bethelview, over near where the Polo Fields are," King said. "We are mirroring the same timing for our event up in Cumming as well."

He said there are 27 Goddard Schools around metro Atlanta.