Tell them to go play with their cliques instead?

I was part of the nerdy, uncool "clique".
We never bullied or excluded anyone.

When I was 10, I was suddenly ditched by my so-called friends. They would sing songs about how they didn’t like me when I tried to play with them, and it made recess and lunch really hard.

I tried staying inside to avoid everyone, and one day my teacher said something like, “Why aren’t you outside? Don’t you have any friends?” I don’t remember what I said, but I remember fighting back tears of shame and embarrassment. A couple decades later and I still remember that.

Looking back, it was mind boggling how clueless my teachers were about the social structures among students. We're not all friends, and we didn't get into fights because "we just don't understand each other." There are cliques and hierarchies, and they start early. I remember in 2nd grade, the kids in my class started to segregate by ethnicity, income and so on. The really shitty thing was in elementary school, they wouldn't let the kids who were rejected from social groups stay in class and read a book or go to the library. The dumb fuck adults would just say go outside and "play" with the other kids. So you basically had to stand outside alone every recess and lunch and count the minutes till it was over and hope the others wouldn't pick on you in the meantime :/

You couldn't play with yourself, like, as a kid, outside you could always imagine something was going on in the bushes. Maybe they were just trying to get you to use your imagination!