Coming home today I had a thought, “What do you do when kids don’t get along?”
Through my observations, I’ve seen an instance or two – or twelve – of unnecessary, pointless arguing, bickering, or teasing. It has really caused me to wonder what a teacher can do to make kids get along? The arguments and “problems” seem so insignificant to you as an adult, but for a child at that moment they are a huge issue. Being at the front of the line or being the one to do a certain classroom task are very important parts of classroom life, which can then create some tension between students.
When disagreements occur, how do you figure out the truth if you weren’t present for the incident? That is an issue I have been contemplating over the past few weeks. Teacher biases can also have a great influence on these situations. As a teacher candidate I have found myself wondering with how I will respond and cope with disagreeable situations between my future students? As I spend more time in classrooms and begin to form the roots of my Teacher Philosophy, I realize how important empathy and kindness are to me and how I want my classroom to feel safe. Empathy is a learned emotion, and a difficult one to fully embrace at a young age. There’s the golden rule, “Do onto others as you would have done onto you,” but empathy takes that a few steps further. Thinking about how the other person is going to feel before you respond to a situation is a very hard skill to learn. I have a soft spot for the underdog and have to remind myself about the “overdogs” in the situation as well. Just because a child said or did an unkind thing does not mean that that child is themselves, unkind.
So! For where I am at so far in my teacher education, I think in difficult social situations with students, the truth is where to start. Do your best to dig through the mess to find out what happened and when that does not work… I’m not sure! I’m also realizing that this may be a “learn as you go” part of teacher education. Every disagreement, conflict, or incident between students is unique so it would be impossible to perfectly prepare and plan exactly what to say for each one. So, I leave you with what I have learned so far…
Do your best to seek the truth to help students build empathy towards their peers.
I had to laugh when I read “an instance or two – or twelve”. So true that in any group of young children (or adults even), there are going to be multiple opportunities to observe conflict.
You are developing some important realizations and I love that you are connecting this with your emerging philosophy. This organic process is just what I hope to see occurring.
re: Where to start – I think you are doing some backward planning here – You know where you want to end up and I trust you will begin to determine where you might begin. The starting point will also often depend on the individual situation ;D
Learning conflict resolution is an important part of child development. As a teacher, as you’ve started to discover, we need to encourage the use of language to express feelings, validate that feelings aren’t ‘bad’ or ‘good’ and reinforce that our actions don’t define US as ‘bad’ or ‘good’. Have you come across the idea of conflict resolution through problem solving circles or considered the use of puppetry to support problem solving in the primary grades?
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I haven’t seen this before! I totally agree with your point about “good” and “bad”. Thanks Yvonne!