From VietNamNet Bridge

Trinh Nguyet Minh sits down at the small folded table, wipes the sweat from her face and attentively opens her pamphlet offering advice to first-year university students. The temperature in the 10-sq.m room is 37 degrees Celsius. Some newly-washed clothes hang by the door, drying in the sunlight.

A typical image of a row of rented rooms for students in Ha Noi. A large proportion of immigrant students have to rent rooms while attending university as dorms cannot not provide enough accommodation.

The room feels very stuffy, as it is full of books, shoes, bowls, kitchen equipment and a bulging wardrobe.

Minh moved in here, in Ha Noi’s Thanh Xuan District, last week after a long search for accommodation.

“I spent two weeks exploring lanes all over the city before finding this place, which costs VND1 million (US$47) per month and so fits my budget,” says the 18-year-old girl from northern Hung Yen Province. This amount is nearly half the monthly allowance provided by her parents, who are farmers, she explains.

“It’s not perfect. The room with the metal roof gets really hot on summer days and it is 10km away from my university. However, it doesn’t matter as I will spend most of my time at school and I don’t mind cycling,” she says with the eagerness of a young adult about to start an exciting new adventure fresh from receiving excellent university entrance results.

Minh was not alone in her hard search for lodgings. About 80 per cent of 300,000 first-year students across the country have not been offered a place in their universities’ dormitories. Many are still struggling to seek a room, even though the new school year has already started.

Tran Thanh Binh, former head of the Viet Nam School of Research and Design under the Ministry of Education and Training, says that a housing shortage for tertiary students has existed since the 1990s after universities began to thrive in Viet Nam, especially in big cities like Ha Noi and Sai Gon.

According to the latest reports, almost half of 400 universities and colleges nationwide can only accommodate about 20 per cent of their students. Land for student housing and other support facilities accounts for less than 4 per cent of their areas.

“Limited land funds have led to a substandard educational environment at these universities, including insufficient dormitories,” Binh says, adding that infrastructure is equally as important in education as training programmes and teachers.

Most existing universities were established on sites of less than 10ha and 15 universities hover on as little as 1ha of land. The average living area for a university student in Viet Nam is 35.7sq.m, while the figure in Ha Noi is about 13sq.m and in Sai Gon, 10sq.m. Many of the universities and colleges in the two cities can only offer 5sq.m of space per student. They are struggling to expand their dormitories and upgrade other facilities.

Minh says that the dormitories at the University of National Economy, where she will study, can only provide accommodation for 1,000 of the nearly 18,000 students.

“Undergraduates who come from mountainous or remote areas are prioritised, as are the children of war invalids and martyrs,” she says, noting that she does not belong to any prioritised group.

Making ends meet

Finding a room for rent is just the beginning for students like Minh adapting to life in a big city.

She must also pay an additional cost of VND300,000 ($14) for electricity and water every month, which is much more expensive than back home.

“Everything’s so costly and I fear that the owner may raise prices without reasons or warning, as I’ve heard that that can happen,” she says. “It’s good life experience though, as I pay a lot of attention to what I’m spending. I need to cover the rent and utilities, take care of myself and pay for a billion other tiny things on a fixed fund from my parents.”

“There are many challenges ahead for Minh,” says third-year student Do Thi Truc Anh, 21, from the Ha Noi University.

Anh moved rooms five times during the first six months of her first term. The owner of her first rented house locked the common gate before 10pm even though her part-time job ended at 11pm, while her second house was situated next to a welding workshop and the noise was unbearable. Bad and uncaring landlords also played a role.

Now, Anh plans to move to yet another because a couple of days ago she returned home from school to discover that her laptop had “vanished into thin air” from inside her locked room. Anh confronted the owner of the house and they said they had no idea what happened and refused to take responsibility.

“It’s hard for me to focus on studying when I’m busy worrying about whether I will find another room and the troubles I have to deal with from my current landlords. Each time you move to a new room, you have to re-arrange everything from A to Z and adapt to a new environment, which can be hard,” she flows.

Pham Sy Liem, vice president of the Viet Nam Federation of Civil Engineering Associations, says that the failure of universities to prepare enough land for their students to live on could be seen as a business opportunity to others, especially local households.

“People usually build simple rooms and offer them to students who mostly come from other provinces and prefer to spend a modest sum for rent,” he explains.

“As a market rule, quality and the price of products run parallel. If you pay a low price you will most likely get a poor house.”

Private households often fail to ensure proper conditions for their clients and may not care about their complaints. Professional housing companies, on the other hand, are not interested in investing in the sector because of low profits, Liem claims.

He would like to see more Government’s incentives for investors involved in social housing projects, including those for students.

Binh sees the relocation of universities from inner city areas to the suburbs as urgent in order to ensure there is enough land to develop functional constructions, including dorms.

The model of university towns containing several universities could create a better educational environment and allow them to make full use of new lecture halls, sports facilities, libraries and dorms, he envisions.

“Housing projects for students should not stand separately but in connection with schools, at least in terms of transportation, residency management and convenience. Travel time should be minimised as much as possible.”

To reduce hardships for freshers like Minh, older students like Tran Thi Minh Hue, now in her third year at the Posts and Telecommunications Institute of Technology, joined voluntary student groups.

“We collect information about renting houses, including locations, prices, the pros and cons of each room and take the new house-seekers to visit suitable ones,” she says.

“After several months, students can find a room to rent by themselves via suggestions from classmates or online websites.”

Minh claims that if she could get a place in her school dormitory, her housing spending would reduce at least five times, relieving the burden on her parents.

“Learning at university is totally wonderful if every student gets a place in a dormitory,” Minh says while collecting her now-dry clothes. In the absence of that option though, she is ready to adapt to life in the big city and step out bravely into her new future.

From TUOITRENEWS

Several Viet Kieu (overseas Vietnamese) directors have returned to Vietnam to make films over recent years. Their homecomings, whether successful or not, breathe freshness and novelty to the country’s local film industry.

Vietnamese American actor/ director Dustin Nguyen. Photo from Tuoi Tre

Unlike those who founded the Viet Kieu film sector, today’s batch of Vietnamese-origin directors, most of who come from the US, where they have had some experience with Hollywood, integrate better as they target local audiences rather than merely to screen films abroad.

Charlie Nguyen, who was previously known as director of comic skits among overseas Vietnamese communities and a few films such as “Hung Vuong the 18th” and “Chances Are” produced in the US, made his directing debut in his home country with “Dong mau anh hung” (The Rebel) in 2006.

The film, which won notable critical acclaim and breathed novelty into the local insipid film industry back then, took Nguyen more than 10 years to write the script and two years to travel throughout the country for shooting. He even spent almost US$2 million from his family into the film and has debts till now.

The film immediately catapulted him and his younger brother Johnny Tri Nguyen and Dustin Nguyen into stardom.

Victor Vu, whose first film “Spirits” couldn’t get through censorship in Vietnam in 2004, officially marked his homecoming with “Chuyen tinh xa xu” (Passport to Love) five years later. The film struck a strong impression on local audiences for its unique taste.

Meanwhile, though Nguyen Duc Minh’s “Touch”, which hit US screens in 2011 and local screens one year later, didn’t yield high box office revenues, it won considerable critical acclaim. Minh is about to shoot his next film “Ky nu mau va tinh yeu xanh”.

Charlie Nguyen, Victor Vu and Dustin Nguyen said that though they had had lots of opportunities with foreign investors, they still make and distribute films in Vietnam. Some of their films are broadcast in other countries on a limited scale or distributed on DVDs after screening in Vietnam.

Challenges ahead

These overseas Vietnamese directors are also faced with countless challenges making films in their home country.

After the success of his heavily-invested “Dong mau anh hung”, Charlie Nguyen went on to make such comedies as box office record comedies “De mai tinh” (Fool for Love), “Long ruoi” (Big Boss) and “Cuoi ngay keo lo” (Love Puzzles). Though these films earned exceptionally high revenues, they failed to earn critical acclaim. 

“Bui doi Cho Lon” (Gangsters of the Cho Lon melting pot), a martial arts, action-packed flick, with which Charlie Nguyen expected to mark his comeback, was banned from screening for featuring many gory, violent fighting and killing scenes.

In 2010, Victor Vu was also faced with the plagiarism accusation regarding the astoundingly striking resemblances between his film “Giao lo dinh menh” (Inferno) and Hollywood flick “Shattered”. Vu was so depressed that he refused to pick up the seven awards for his two films “Bi mat tham do” (Scandal) and heavily-invested “Thien menh anh hung” (Blood Letter) at the 2012 Golden Kite award.

At 50, Dustin Nguyen made his first film called “Lua Phat” (Once upon a time in Vietnam), which he took it to the 2013 Cannes Festival and expected to be a blockbuster. However, the film failed to do so.

Despite the challenges ahead, more overseas Vietnamese film directors are returning home. Victor Vu is shooting his new film titled “Qua tim mau” (The bloody heart), which is adapted from a hit ghost play, after he finished “Co dau dai chien 2” (Bride war 2).

Thien Do’s “Tien chua” and Ham Tran “Am muu giay got nhon” (How to fight in six inch heels) are also waiting to hit local screens. Tran Cong Thanh (Ethan Tran) is shooting his first film “Luu manh dau bep” (The dishonest chef). Nguyen Vo Nghiem Minh, whose “Mua len trau” (The Buffalo Boy) won several international awards, is now busy with his new film project “Nuoc” (Water). Tran Anh Hung, who is famous with “The Scent of Green Papaya”, “I Come With the Rain” and “Norwegian Wood”, adapted from  a famed novel by Japanese author Haruki Murakami, also expressed his wish to make a new film in Vietnam.

Within the past 30 years, Ho Quang Minh is the first overseas Vietnamese director to make a film in his home country. His film, “Con thu tat nguyen” (The disabled animal), produced in 1985, is the first of such foreign-element films.

Followed is “Xich lo” (Cyclo) (1995) by Tran Anh Hung), “Bui hong” (The rose bush) (1996), “Ba mua” (Three seasons) (1998) by Tony Bui, and “Mua len trau” (The Buffalo Boy) (2003) by Nguyen Vo Nghiem Minh.

By Chris Hewitt, Twin Cities

Have you seen “Mess Saigon?”

Miss Saigon will play at the Ordway Center for the Performing Arts Oct. 8-13, 2013. (Courtesy of the Ordway)

No, not the musical “Miss Saigon,” which plays at the Ordway Center for the Performing Arts from Oct. 8 to Oct. 13, but the messy controversy that has swirled around the show each of the three times it has played in the Twin Cities.

A Broadway smash that ran for 10 years, “Miss Saigon” played in Minneapolis theaters in 1994 and 2004. An updating of the “Madame Butterfly” story, it takes place as the U.S. is about to withdraw from Vietnam and a soldier named Chris, whose affair with a bargirl named Kim has resulted in her pregnancy, leaves with a promise to return.

“Miss Saigon” is a huge spectacle, with songs by the team behind “Les Miserables.” But don’t expect Mu Performing Arts artistic director Randy Reyes to line up for tickets. He has quite a few objections to the musical:

“There is the over-sexualization of Asian women, the narrative of the Asian woman killing herself for a white man, the general romanticization of human trafficking, the idea of an adoption because the United States is supposedly the best place for an Asian-American child to grow up, and all of the ideas that come along with colonialism and privilege,” said Reyes, a Filipino-American.

Reyes can envision script changes that would address those issues, much like playwright David Henry Hwang’s recent revision to make the 1958 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical “Flower Drum Song” more in keeping with the times.

As it stands, Reyes doesn’t think “Miss Saigon” should be performed. At all.

“The show is hurtful to our community, living day-to-day as Asian-Americans,” Reyes said. “If it was set on a plantation, and there was a black slave woman who fell in love with her white slave owner and pined for him and then killed herself for him, the African-American community would be up in arms. People would think more than twice about producing that show. So why is it OK in an Asian-American context?”

Reyes hasn’t always felt that way.

As a student, he said, he saw “Miss Saigon” in London and “loved it.”

“I thought it was great,” he said. “It wasn’t until later that I thought more about my responsibility to the community, that I thought, ‘Wow. That is not a good message to show the world.’ “

The theatricality that initially dazzled Reyes is a big reason “Miss Saigon” keeps returning.

“There’s a lot of excitement about the production among our audience members,” said Patricia Mitchell, president and CEO of the Ordway.

“You can tell from ticket buyers that they are excited to see a show that is by the people who brought us ‘Les Miz.’ They view it primarily as a popular musical theater piece.”

Not that the Ordway is deaf to the complaints of protesters. When the decision was made to bring back “Miss Saigon,” Ordway officials were aware of previous controversies.

“It’s certainly part of the institutional history of the Ordway,” said Mitchell, adding that the show remains compelling because it raises so many issues.

“What issue you focus on depends on the lens through which you look at the piece. If I look at it through my moral and political and philosophical feelings about the war, that tends to be how I see the piece. If you are an Asian or Asian-American actor, you might look at it through a casting lens. If you are an Asian or Asian-American woman, you might look at it through the lens of stereotypes.”

That last lens came up at a “Miss Saigon” informational meeting attended by Reyes and Mitchell.

“There were people there who spoke very movingly of their very personal issues. A woman who identified herself as a Korean-American adoptee spoke up,” Mitchell said. “She had met someone who said to her that she must be the child of a prostitute because why else would a mother give up her child?”

Mitchell said the Ordway is looking at the show as an opportunity to face those sorts of stereotypes and misconceptions. The theater has invited “Miss Saigon” ticket holders to a free conversation about the show.

There will be a question-and-answer session with the cast after at least one performance. And information, providing context for the show and the controversy, will appear in the program and on the Ordway website.

Performer and arts administrator Sandy Agustin, a Filipino-American who was a protester both times “Miss Saigon” was in town, said that’s a good start.

“Wouldn’t it be interesting if there were something in the program that said, ‘We understand this story represents one, outdated perspective,” she said.

“We understand people are offended by some of the stereotypes in this production, but it is our intention to generate dialogue around those stereotypes.’ “

Agustin said she is disappointed “Miss Saigon” is returning, but she isn’t surprised.

“I’m sure there are Asian-Americans who love the show, and the people who are in it are happy to be there,” she said. “It’s hard when something makes a lot of money like that.

“I get tired of it. People say, ‘Sandy, you’re an Asian-American, so of course you’re getting upset about the show.’ But you don’t have to be an Asian-American woman to be upset by this. I’m also half-white. So, this time, let’s say the other side of me is upset. The white side.”

One performer who is happy to be in “Miss Saigon” is Orville Mendoza, the Filipino-American who plays the largest role, a Vietnamese huckster called the Engineer, who guides the audience through the show. Having performed “Miss Saigon” from 1994-2000 on tour and now back with the show, Mendoza may have a deeper experience with it than almost anyone.

“The show deals with difficult subject matter, but at no time have I felt like it was trying to make a statement that all, or even many, Asian people are like these characters. It is about a very small segment of the population,” Mendoza said. “And not all shows depict people in the best light. People don’t look at ‘West Side Story’ and think all Puerto Ricans are gangsters or ‘Cabaret’ and think all Germans are Nazis.”

Mendoza was involved in last year’s controversy at California’s La Jolla Playhouse, where a new musical called “The Nightingale” cast a non-Asian actor as a Chinese man, so he said he understands where protesters here are coming from.

“These questions are still out there, positive and negative. We are still talking about race,” Mendoza said. “I appreciate that people are still talking about the appropriateness of the show. They’re entitled to their opinions, and it is not for everyone’s taste.”

Although Reyes said he wishes theaters would either stop performing “Miss Saigon” or revise it before they do, that does not seem likely to happen. A major London revival is planned for next year, with a possible Broadway followup and, in addition to the four-city tour the Ordway production is a part of, stagings are planned in Houston and Washington, D.C.

Mendoza can’t speak for those other productions, but he said he views the one coming to the Ordway as “a blessing.”

“I think the show can be used as a tool for people to express their feelings — about our show or about the war or about how Asians in the media are portrayed,” Mendoza said. “We want to be provocative and entertaining and raise questions about (the U.S.) involvement in Vietnam. But I give people my word that our intent is not to offend.”

By Todd Wardrope, TC Daily Planet

On August 4, 2013, Vietnamese pop star Hồng Ngọc culminated her international My Life tour in a final performance at Mystic Lake Casino. The main showroom of the casino was near capacity with an audience that spanned kids to senior citizens. There was obvious excitement in the crowd before her five-piece back-up band Strikerz warmed up the room with a few instrumental rock sets. After that, her tour mates performed a few songs with the Strikerz supporting. Trinh Nhat Tuan, Nhat Tinh Anh, and Pham Khanh Hung are all younger gentleman who performed energetic romantic ballads with considerable showmanship. Each of them had their own approach, and though they shared a general visual stlye, I got the sense they were using the opportunity to reach a wider group of fans. Henry Chuc is more established and  brought a mature presence to the stage, he took the time to perform more reflective sounding ballads which I imagine appealed more to the older members of the audience.

Hồng Ngọc

Hồng Ngọc, draped in sequins and glitter,  joined the group of supporting acts for a routine in which she exchanged duets with each of them. She shared quite a bit of banter in Vietnamese,  which was lost on me, but I got the impression that she was expressing the thanks and happiness she felt after performing with them throughout the tour. They left the stage for the time, each of them to return to perform later during her wardrobe changes, and she performed a series of high-energy pop songs which were driven by a range of contemporary Top 40 rhythms. After several of these more energetic songs, she left the stage to change into a less flashy dress. On her return, she changed the show into a set of slower songs which were inspired by a variety of musical styles. Latin, new wave 80’s, and sitar could be heard, adjusted to fit the tempo and mood of her flashy big room show. A final wardrobe change brought her back in a red and sequin outfit and a shift into a slower set of romantic ballads. She brought the show to an end with a rousing, high energy song which was a hybrid of ballad, club music and bass-heavy rock and roll. She got the audience to their feet, many of them standing from their seats to wave and clap to her finale.

Hồng Ngọc is described as “The Lady Gaga of Vietnam,” a moniker that I think is a misnomer. Both of them are international performers, and clearly Hồng Ngọc has an appeal that extends beyond the physical boundaries of Vietnam. She does perform in Vietnamese and the majority of her crowd understood her banter and lyrics, but she does bring a level of showmanship that puts her in a global category. I don’t think the comparison to Lady Gaga is appropriate at all, though. Hồng Ngọc is flashy and energetic, for sure, but her stage persona and presentation is much closer to classic adult contemporary performers such as Cher, Striesand or Neil Diamond. Her duet with Henry Chuc could very easily have performed in a Vegas dinner showroom instead of the Mystic Lake Casino. Her pop sensibilities are much more family-friendly than Lady Gaga or even Katy Perry.

She lost me with most of her ballads, but I could see the audience enjoyed them and were what they wanted to see and hear. Hồng Ngọc is also very verbose in her onstage banter, another thing she shares with her showroom colleagues, but she is an engaging storyteller and always got laughs from the crowd during the substantial breaks. Again, all of the spoken language was lost on me but her body language and performance gave me the impression she was telling “road stories” and a little bit of background for each of her songs. I didn’t get the feeling these breaks slowed the show down, rather they helped create a experience with the artist, similar to what you might get in a more intimate show. Similarly, she also personally helped with at her own merch booth after the show, something I think would be unthinkable for many pop stars of her stature.  After the show, her opening acts could be seen moving around the casino and interacting with the guests in a more casual manner. There were no screaming fans, but there was also a much thinner barrier between entertainer and audience.

There were a few minor technical glitches, and she navigated all of these without losing form or tone. Mystic Lake has a pretty nice video monitor set-up, so even when she was performing to the other side of the room, you could watch her moves in detail on the big screen. Hồng Ngọc was an expert at playing to all parts of the room and keeping it interesting for the cameras. She’s been performing all her life and all that experience was on brilliant display at Mystic Lake.

By Theresa Celebran Jones, Hyphen Magazine

A few weeks ago, I saw my big kid off to Kindergarten on the school bus for the very first time. Months ago, she had been in anguish over the idea of going to a new school where she knew nobody, but you wouldn’t have guessed it while we were waiting at the bus stop. In fact, she spent the last weeks of summer barely able to contain her excitement. We had visited the school a few times and met some of the faculty, and each time she’d walk off to play in the front yard of the school and come back ten minutes later with a new friend. She was Ready (with a capital R).

Photo from Hyphen Magazine

I met the day mostly with pride. Our daughter was well-equipped for the change — much more than I would have been at her age. We had already moved cross-country once, and she had been in preschool for three years prior to this. She has always been super friendly and social, and she already had a lot of experience being thrown into a new environment and having to make a whole new set of friends. I figured going off to Kindergarten was old hat for us. It was an important milestone for us, but it was a positive, happy one; at least, that’s what I told myself as I tried to keep the mom-anxiety at bay.

She made it through the first week with the same positive attitude, but then mentioned nonchalantly that a couple of boys — boys whose names she’d mentioned literally every day as being the funniest kids in class — had been mean to her. I tried my best to play it cool, but I did feel my heart beating faster and my blood pressure rising. Why didn’t the teacher tell me? How are we going to handle this? Is it okay to teach her to hit back? And after the kids went to bed that night, I drafted a long, incensed email to the teacher.

My husband and I tend to err on the side of hypersensitivity when it comes to bullying, thanks to our own childhoods. My husband attended middle school in Seoul where, as a mixed kid, he stuck out and frequently got into fights. I spent all of my early years getting beat up on by my cousins, then in elementary school I made a best friend who had gained the title by isolating me from the rest of our classmates and picking on me until I sufficiently felt like I wasn’t allowed to sit with anyone else at lunch.

Coming up in a predominantly white suburb of Connecticut has informed a lot of the decisions I’ve made as a mother. According to Great Schools, my alma mater is currently 82% white, but that number was undoubtedly higher when I graduated 13 years ago. While this experience wasn’t terribly traumatic — I made it out alive and sane, and I still keep in touch with a classmate or two, after all — the racial isolation I experienced wasn’t something I’d choose to put my kids through.

There were no burning crosses out there. I didn’t learn the term “microaggressions” until college, but that was what my childhood was full of. Neighborhood kids telling me my house smelled funny or insisting they couldn’t understand what my parents were asking them, even when they were speaking English. A group of classmates in high school asking crazy inappropriate questions like the size of my dad’s genitalia. Even when these kids were being “nice”, they were being assholes. I had a friend who nicknamed me “Pah” — which stood for “Pretty Asian Hair.” I was catcalled by high school boys and called a chink in the same breath.

My home life made me especially susceptible to bullying. My cousins grew up in the same town and they knew the racial isolation well. I think it was natural for them to deflect the pain onto me. It wasn’t just standard bullying fare either, like picking on me because I was little and I wore glasses. A lot of it was because I was part Chinese, not full Filipino like them. I got the slanty eyes a lot, and the “Let’s see if we can blindfold Theresa with this dental floss” a lot. My family always explained this to me as their way of making me feel included; it was kind of a rite of passage that my older cousins went through with our older older cousins, and they’d insisted I’d feel left out if they didn’t beat up on me.

It wasn’t so much that I wanted to be included, either. In the end, I realized I didn’t want to be accepted by any of these people. I mostly wanted to feel like I had some control and agency. I wanted someone to be on my side and help me feel brave. My parents were not big on teaching or allowing me to speak up in most situations, and when it came to my cousins, their best (only) advice was to ignore them, which was difficult to do when I was at their house almost every day. Their other solution — signing me up for Tae Kwon Do — only opened me up to more ridicule at a time where I wanted to minimize the my exposure to Asian things as much as possible.

I harnessed all of that frustration by going punk in high school, by writing, and by taking a special interest in social justice. Focusing on injustice in the world around me was a way for me to speak out without standing up to my bullies face-to-face. And this fear of speaking up still haunts me as an adult — I still have a recurring theme in my nightmares of needing to scream but not having a voice. And, obviously I’m still passive-aggressively blogging my issues to avoid the discomfort of confronting some of the bullies I still have contact with.

Since the day I was pregnant with my older kid, I promised myself that, as a mom, I wouldn’t go out that way. I would teach my child assertiveness, I would let her know I supported her, and I would make sure she fought back. But it’s tricky to teach skills that I never learned myself. My husband has mostly taken over as the king of being assertive and fighting back, but I find myself occasionally getting in the way by being overly concerned about having a polite, well-behaved child — just like I was when I was young.

At the very least, racial isolation is not something we have to worry about in our elementary school. For one, like Aimee Phan recently wrote in the NY Times, we pay a premium to live in L.A. specifically to avoid that type of thing. But our daughter also attends a magnet school where only 37% of the student body is white, and a whopping 31% of the student body is Asian (as opposed to my old high school’s measly 8%). That said, racial integration isn’t necessarily a remedy to good ol’ garden variety bullying.

I did end up sending a diplomatic email to my daughter’s teacher, to let her know what she said and that I would continue to ask her if the situation improved. My husband and I also had a long talk with our girl, telling her that it was okay to tell people she doesn’t like it when they are being mean to her.

And after a phone call to the teacher to get more information, it didn’t seem to be much of a bullying situation at all, really. In the end, they were boys my daughter chose to play with every day — the teacher even asked if we knew them from before Kindergarten because they acted so familiar with each other — and maybe she just didn’t have the words to tell them, “Hey, I don’t like when you guys say those things or play rough like that.” I may have jumped the gun with my Mama Bear steez, but hopefully my kid gained at least a little of the courage I never had.

– See more at: http://www.hyphenmagazine.com/blog/archive/2013/08/baggage-racial-bullying#sthash.J7WQnkFl.dpuf

By Matt Rocheleau, Boston.com

The following is a column from Dr. Huy Nguyen, medical director at the Boston Public Health Commission and a pediatrician at the Dorchester House Multi-Service Center:

Hot summer days have meant hours of fun for the children of Boston. But, cooler mornings, advertisements for backpack sales, and the winding down of summer camps can mean only one thing: the new school year is upon us. While each student has his or her own list of “must have” school supplies, there are a few things that families can keep in mind to ensure that their student goes back to school as prepared, healthy, and as safe as possible.

Photo from Edudemic.

Be Healthy

Before beginning the new school year, check with your pediatrician to confirm that your child is up to date with all recommended immunizations for their age. Vaccines are the proven safe and effective way to protect your children from many serious infections that they may be exposed to in the classroom, school bus, or school yard. Pertussis, the bacteria that causes whooping cough, for instance, infected more than 41,000 Americans in 2012, and caused 18 deaths, mostly in young children. Middle school and high school outbreaks of whooping cough, can be prevented by giving 11- and 12-year old children the Tdap vaccine, to “boost” their immunity when the protection from the vaccines they received as infants and preschoolers is waning.

Another important way to stay healthy is to get the influenza vaccine. Either the flu shot, or the flu nasal-spray vaccine, is the single best way to protect your student and your family from influenza, an infection which causes more hospitalizations and deaths among American children than any other vaccine-preventable disease. All children over 6 months should receive the flu vaccine. Kids under age five years and children with a chronic illness such as asthma or developmental delay, are at high-risk for having severe flu symptoms and should receive the flu vaccine as soon as it is available, usually by mid-September.

Being healthy isn’t just about physical health. Mental health during the school year is also incredibly important. Stressors such as bullying can affect a child’s performance in the classroom and at home. Keep an open dialogue with your child about bullying and seek help should your child experience trouble at school. The Boston Public Schools Bullying Prevention Hotline at (617) 592-2378 is available to provide resources to both parents and kids experiencing bullying in school and also as a means to report instances of teasing.

Be Prepared

It’s not just kindergarteners who may be nervous about starting the new school year. Starting another year, moving to a new classroom and meeting new friends can be as stressful as starting a new job. Help your children mentally prepare by practicing their school routine during the last week of summer vacation. Help set their internal “clock” by getting them to bed early and waking them up according to their daily school routine. Reading a story to your children at the end of a busy day is still one of the best ways to settle them down for bed. In general, 4- to 9-year olds need at least 10 to 11 hours of sleep; older children need about 9 to 10 hours of sleep every night. Well-rested students are more attentive in class and perform better academically.

Be Safe

Whether your child walks, receives a ride, bikes, or drives to school, getting there safely is everyone’s priority. Walkers should be reminded to cross streets at pedestrian crosswalks and to look for walk signals. School bus riders should not cross the street in front of the bus unless they can be seen by the bus driver. Student cyclists should always wear helmets and follow the rules of the road. If your child is driving to school, help your teen to follow Massachusetts’ graduated driving laws designed to keep teen drivers safe when their risk for crashing is greatest: during the first six months of their licensure, at nighttime, and when they are driving with other teenagers in the car. Be a good example and always wear your seatbelt and insist that your children do, too. Talk to your teen about never drinking and driving and never getting into a car with a driver who may be under the influence of alcohol or other substances.

Heading back to school is an exciting time of year, with new teachers and new opportunities. To succeed, our kids need to stay happy and safe– and always, stay kids at heart. With that in mind, let’s do our best to keep them healthy and always ready to learn.