That’s the question Nisha asked over and over when she was in her first year of high school. She didn’t think she had done anything to deserve it. But sometimes she wondered. She wondered if it was her nationality. She was born in Canada but her parents had moved from South Africa just a year before that.

She thought about whether the bullying might have something to do with her high grades. She had been top of the class in most of her subjects back in elementary school. She knew a few kids were jealous, but she didn’t think she had done anything to make them that way.

Nisha thought about the put-downs a lot of the time. Sometimes the others would talk just loud enough for her to hear bits and pieces of the conversation. She knew they were doing it on purpose, but she had become used to it. More recently, she had Continue reading →