The subject of this post may seem a bit heavy, but what I have in mind is conflict resolution in the classroom.  I want to see what insight can be gleaned from looking into mediation techniques used in the broader, global political ‘classroom,’ filled with characters who shift between the roles of ‘bully’ and ‘victim’ and ‘neutral,’ depending on perspective and on the available information.

In my life and my profession, I am learning how when communication shuts down there is little hope for progress or change.  We all need to practise the art of talking it out!

“In answer to the question, should we negotiate with terrorists, Roger Fisher (writer in the second edition of Getting To Yes) replies with a resounding yes, because the better our communication, the better our chances of exerting influence. But doesn’t negotiating with someone whose behavior you abhor grant them legitimacy that they didn’t have before, and therefore reward criminal activity? Won’t this encourage further bad behavior because it means we have given into pressure? According to Fisher, it may confer a little legitimacy, but this effect can be minimized by involving relatively low level or non-governmental personnel in the initial talks. The effect could actually be eliminated if we had a policy of negotiating with anyone. With such a policy, no one could attain special status just because negotiations were opened.

What is much more certain and important is that a refusal to negotiate indicates rejection of the other side, and rejection creates serious physical and psychological obstacles to problem solving, because it prevents clear communication from taking place, and it guarantees defensiveness and resistance to change. We simply need to make it clear that a decision to negotiate does not mean acceptance of the other side’s behavior. We can in fact love our enemies and hate what they do, but to prove it we need to act in loving ways by accepting their humanity enough to negotiate for mutual gains. Each side need get no more than that to which they are entitled. And we need to remember that regardless of how we respond, there are no guaranteed results, except that forced agreements are always very unstable.

We need not accept their values or their conduct. What we do accept is the humanity underneath as deserving of due process with the realization that we could be at least partially wrong in our perceptions and conclusions (because of stereotyping, attribution bias, projection, misinformation, inadequate data, etc.). According to Fisher and Brown in their 1988 book Getting Together, we should consider all others as equals, that is “equally human, equally caught up in the situation, equally entitled to have rights, and equally entitled to have any interests and views taken into account” (Fisher & Brown, p. 160). In reality, that is a fairly minimal level of acceptance. But shouldn’t the enemy have to give something for this kind of acceptance? No, bargaining over acceptance is like bargaining over apology: acceptance is only effective when freely given, not when it’s withheld. It is coercive to use acceptance as a bargaining chip; it creates distrust and it helps further entrench a defensive, adversarial relationship.”

http://www.mediate.com/articles/currie4.cfm

Very practical for our students, here is a really great link to a mediation webpage designed to help children become mediators, in order to become confident resolvers of conflict!!!  Just click on the mediation image below, it’ll take you there.

As the banner reads, the site Voice of Witness is
‘illuminating human rights crises through oral history.’

www.voiceofwitness.com

I highly recommend reading any of the interviews and stories found here.
The reason why is best summed up in the words of a contributor, found below:

An interview with Out of Exile editor Craig Walzer, featured in The Rumpus:

We need to be able to digest and give people who are very far away the time and space to tell their story in their own words, rather than these hygienic CNN clips of a mother crying and saying we need supplies, or, ‘They came and burned our village in the middle of the night and we had to run.’ It’s so much more important to humanize things like that.

Here is an interesting website:  http://www.successforall.net/elementary/index.htm

What drew me to this site in particular is my research of conflict resolution, trying to remedy situations so that all people involved walk away feeling happy, and no longer carrying the hurt that led to the conflict because it has been expressed and (ideally) resolved.

I’m reading the “School Climate” link, and it says:

The Getting Along Together K-8 program is a social problem-solving curriculum designed to teach children to think critically, solve problems non-violently, and work in teams effectively and cooperatively. The Getting Along Together program sets in place school-wide processes for preventing and resolving problems among students as well as between students and teachers. Ten interactive, literature-based lessons introduce skills and strategies. Teacher’s guides provide structures for coaching individual students to resolve specific conflicts, and for conducting class-level meetings, setting positive expectations, rewarding positive peer interaction, and addressing class-selected issues as a group throughout the school year. All school staff members, including the principal, teachers, cafeteria staff, and office staff, are trained and involved in the Getting Along Together process to provide an effective, consistent structure.

Curriculum
The Getting Along Together curriculum consists of three components:

Learn About It: Classroom lessons of key problem-solving skills are embedded within reading lessons.

Think It Through: An individual problem-solving model that teaches students to “self-talk” their way through interpersonal problems.

Talk It Out: The Peace Path (an interactive problem-solving model), Roundtable, and Class Councils give students frequent practice using their skills to solve interpersonal problems.

National School Run Day

Friday, September 25, 2009

The Terry Fox National School Run Day (NSRD) allows millions of students across Canada to join together in an inspirational nation-wide day of fundraising for cancer research.

Marathon of Hope

Recently, I got turned onto the educational theory of Marie Clay (1926 -2007).  Basically, her theory is that the three steps to prevention of reading and writing difficulties are:
1.  good preschool experiences in a literate environment
2.  good curriculum for literacy learning in the early years of school (ages 5-8)
3.  early intervention for children left behind by the fast learners

I love Ms. Clay’s idea that
‘teachers and schools are engineering transitions,
not just minding the children until they mature.’

(Yes!  We are not zookeepers!)

Here is an excerpt from the Reading Recovery website:  http://www.readingrecovery.org/reading_recovery/marie_clay/index.asp

Reading Recovery is one of Clay’s important contributions to education. Like the pattern of her work, the program emanated from close involvement with keen insight into those closest to the source. The research project was born from the concerns of classroom teachers who, despite well-designed classroom programs and good teaching, were not able to change the paths of progress for particular children. The driving question, stated with simple elegance, was “What is possible when we change the design and delivery of traditional education for children that teachers find hard to teach?” (Clay 1993b, p. 97.) It is early identification and instruction of these children, and not the classroom programs, that Clay has tried to redesign.

The books I borrowed from the Dartmouth Teacher’s Resource Centre are Reading Recovery:  A guidebook for teachers in training,  An Observation Survey of Early Literacy Achievement, and Running Records for Classroom Teachers.  Look for my favourite segments on the “Library” page of this blog.

Summer time is filled with lazy days with a book in one hand and a icy cold glass of lemonade in the other- on the beach, on the green grass, or on the balcony.

Let’s continue to fill our free time with books!  What is on your September reading list?

I’m looking forward to:

The Reader by Bernhard Schlink
When Will There Be Good News? by Kate Atkinson
On Beauty by Zadie Smith

…among others.

It’s important for us to continue feeding our story-brain, even though some of our free time will be given over to planning and preparing lessons in the new school year.

Bonjour!  Hello!

Tonight I fly to the remote French islands of St. Pierre et Miquelon for an 18 day immersion.

Check the map!  Check the highlights!  http://www.st-pierre-et-miquelon.com/

The spring thaw makes me feel ANIMATED!

So, I’ve sketched out a plan to take a beginner from framing a basic narrative on a storyboard (something like a comic strip) to the ultimate goal of making an animated video.

 Fun, fun, fun!!!

Day 1:  Storyboard

http://www.billybear4kids.com/Learn2Draw/storyboard.shtml

Day 2:  Thaumatrope with text

http://www.youthlearn.org/learning/activities/multimedia/animation.asp

Day 3:

Flip Book

http://www.instructables.com/id/Make_Your_Drawings_Move/

Day 4:

Zoetropes and phenakistascopes require a few more props.

http://www.groeg.de/puzzles/zoetrope.html

http://brightbytes.com/collection/phena.html

 Day 5, 6, 7, 8:

 Computer animation, multimedia presentations or video. 

And that’s how we get to the big, final project of:

How to make a simple stop motion video using Windows Movie Maker

http://www.instructables.com/id/How_to_make_a_simple_stop_motion_video_using_Windo/

 Step 1:

 Animation with dry erase board. For this method all you need is a ‘dry erase’ board (‘whiteboard’), a usb camera, a computer, and some free software.

 Step 2:

 Take some pictures with a small amount of movement in each.

 Steps 3 to 10:

 Open windows movie maker and click and drag the pictures in.

 Drag the pictures into the timeline in order.

 Go into the Tools menu, then Options.

 Click on the Advanced tab, and then change the picture duration and transition duration to the lowest settings.

 Add sound by dragging in the sound, then dragging it to the timeline where you want.

 Preview the movie by clicking on the first frame, then play in the movie preview window.

 If you are happy with your film, click ctrl+p or file, Save movie file.  When you are in, follow the prompts.

If you are unhappy with the speed, select the slow pictures and add the effect speed up, double.

You have just made your first stop motion film!  Congratulations!!!

April Fool!

          I have not been hibernating.  In fact, I’ve been travelling!  

          From coast to coast, with lots of time in the middle, too!

At the center of non-violence stands the principle of love. 

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Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. 

Have we not come to such an impasse in the modern world that we must love our enemies – or else? The chain reaction of evil – hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars – must be broken, or else we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation. 

I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear. 

*

I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality… I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word. 

*

Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into friend.

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Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love. 

*

We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies. 

*

Just a few of the many inspirational thoughts on LOVE by this tremendous orator, Martin Luther King, Jr. 

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Here is an excerpt from MLK’s speech:  Loving Your Enemies

November 17 1957

The Greek language, as I’ve said so often before, is very powerful at this point. It comes to our aid beautifully in giving us the real meaning and depth of the whole philosophy of love. And I think it is quite apropos at this point, for you see the Greek language has three words for love, interestingly enough. It talks about love as eros. That’s one word for love. Eros is a sort of, aesthetic love. Plato talks about it a great deal in his dialogues, a sort of yearning of the soul for the realm of the gods. And it’s come to us to be a sort of romantic love, though it’s a beautiful love. Everybody has experienced eros in all of its beauty when you find some individual that is attractive to you and that you pour out all of your like and your love on that individual. That is eros, you see, and it’s a powerful, beautiful love that is given to us through all of 
the beauty of literature; we read about it.

Then the Greek language talks about philia, and that’s another type of love that’s also beautiful. It is a sort of intimate affection between personal friends. And this is the type of love that you have for those persons that you’re friendly with, your intimate friends, or people that you call on the telephone and you go by to have dinner with, and your roommate in college and that type of thing. It’s a sort of reciprocal 
love. On this level, you like a person because that person likes you. You love on this level, because you are loved. You love on this level, because there’s something about the person you love that is likeable to you. This too is a beautiful love. You can communicate with a person; you have certain things in common; you like to do things together. This is philia.

The Greek language comes out with another word for love. It is the word agape. And agape is more than eros; agape is more than philia; agape is something of the understanding, creative, redemptive goodwill for all men. It is a love that seeks nothing in return. It is an overflowing love; it’s what theologians would call the love of God working in the lives of men. And when you rise to love on this level, you begin to love men, not because they are likeable, but because God loves them. You look at every man, and you love him because you know God loves him. And he might be the worst person you’ve ever seen.

http://www.mlkonline.net/enemies.html