The Excellent 11 by Ron Clark

Author:Ron Clark [Clark, Ron]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hachette Books
Published: 2004-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

Teaching Children to Be Compassionate

In East Harlem I taught a self-contained class of thirty-seven students. If they had all been angels, it still would have been a daunting task, but unfortunately there were several students who presented multiple disciplinary problems. There were times when I wanted to pull my hair out, but, surprisingly, the majority of the problems weren’t between me and the students, they were between the students themselves. I constantly had to act as a mediator of disagreements, many of which involved every student in the class. Sometimes when rifts arise in the classroom, kids take sides and divide the class into two or three cliques to wage battle, throw insults, and make threats. It can be a nightmare. It is unfair to say this happens only with children, because I am sure if you placed thirty-seven adults in a classroom for 180 days a year, a good share of disagreements would arise. It is only natural for humans to have issues and find grievance with one another. When those issues arise, however, it is important to take the time to teach students how to solve the problems amiably and in a mature manner. When kids are gathered together to discuss the issues and everyone states his or her opinion and view of the problem, a solution usually becomes a simple task. About 90 percent of the time disagreements can be resolved by doing the following:

Find out the source of the problem. (Usually there are two main students, often former friends, who are upset with each other.)

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