The Peaceful Classroom

Lagrisola, Renz Michael L

• The camegie coural or Adolescent Development hold that mutually respectful relations are imperative for intellectual development and growth (1989) cited in Goodnow, (1992). Goodnow likewise posits that belonging and acceptance are potentially important factors of learning.

• Lantieri and Patti (1996) put forward that there are relationship between distress, anxiety and 5the ability of our memory to work.

• Schwitzer, et al. (1999) write that one of the vital tasks related to a successful academic experience is being able to establish successful interpersonal relationships in the campus.

WHAT IS

CLASSROOM ?

• The concept was first coined by William Kreidler, an elementary school teacher and conflict expert who saw that conflict in the classroom was caused by many factors such as miscommunication, exclusion, the inability to express feelings appropriately, and the lack of care and respect for each other.

• A peaceable classroom is characterized by affirmation, cooperation, communication, appreciation for diversity, appropriate expression of feelings and peaceful conflict resolution.

• Damaged self-esteem is one of the known effects of bullying. Students, guidance counselors and teachers interviewed from different secondary schools in Manila confined that victims of bullying withdraw or keep themselves frequently from class and some drop out. Grades are also reportedly affected.

• Creating a peaceable classrooms is a way to help students respect and appreciate each other regardless of differences.

Here are some ways to help create that atmosphere of love and acceptance in our classrooms:

• Declare your classroom a zone of peace and establish rules to achieve it.

• As the teacher, let this peace begin with you

• Affirm your students

• Express feelings appropriately and encourage students to do so

• Encourage respect and for acceptance of differences

• Employ more cooperative than competitive activities.

• Teach students how to resolve conflicts peacefully and constructively

• Practice students’ skills communication

• A peaceable classroom is where students feel safe and secure. It is a place where they grow as persons without threats of being ridiculed, marginalized or hurt. Teachers can help build these kinds of classrooms.

• If the principles of peace are taught and lived in the classroom, it will be easier for learners to carry on these values and skills to their other spheres of interaction. The peace teacher should then be happy that s/he has done his/her share in building a society where new norms are peaceable.

Teaching-Learning Approaches and Strategies in Peace Education

• The “how” is as “important” as the “what”. Hence, teaching-learning approaches that are compatible with the goals of peace education are holistic, participatory, cooperative, experiential and humanist.

• Holistic education does not confine itself to the parameters of facts and concepts. Instead, it promotes cognitive, affective and behavioural goals of learning. Often, the focus of learning is the transmission of concepts.

• In peace education, the goals are three-fold.

• First, building of awareness on the realities, roots and concepts of violence, and the building of awareness on the roots of peace.

• Second, building of concern and the development of values and empathy

compassion, hope and social responsibility.

Third, is the call to action beginning with the resolve to change with personal mindsets and attitudes and doing something concrete about situations of violence.

• Participatory Education means allowing learners to inquire, share and collaborate. It allows learners to engage in dialogue with the teacher or with their fellow learners.

• Cooperative Learning means giving opportunities for participants to work together and learn, rather that compete with each other.

• Experiential Education means learning not through didactic means but through the processing of one’s experience from activities instead initiated in the classroom.

• Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow, are proponents of a type of education that is humanist.

• A humanist classroom emphasizes the social, personal and affective growth of the learners.

• In a humanistic classroom, individuals are accepted for what they are. It develops the notion of the self to promote a sense of self-esteem.

• There are many teaching learning strategies that are compatible with the approaches to peace education described above. They are as follows:

• There are many teaching learning strategies that are compatible with the approaches to peace education described above. They are as follows:

• Use of films and photographs

• Telling stories

• Song/Poem analysis

• Sentence Completion

• Journal writing/Individual Reflection

• Go-round

• Teachable Moments

• Interviews/Research

• Expert Resources

• Reciprocal Teaching

• Twinning Project

• Dialogues

• Exposure trips

• Use of Globes and Maps

• Brainstorming

• Reading quotations

• Use of Charts and Graphs

• Case Studies

• Collage-making

• Show and Tell

• These approaches and strategies are important tools toward the development of the students’ intellect, attitudes and spirit that may be inspired to work for peace.

• In deciding what strategy or approach to take, the particular lesson/session objectives have to be considered.

• Which strategies would be most appropriate and effective in achieving the latter? As we use the foregoing tools, let us always be mindful of our goal, which is to facilitate learning that is holistic, participatory collaborative, experiential and humanist.

Attributes of a Peace Educator

the phrase, ‘the medium is the message”, used in a school setting, suggests to us that the teachers have the power to affect the lives of children and youth.

• Students often remember that informal and “hidden” lessons, not from the overt or stated curriculum, but from the attitudes, values and actions of the teachers themselves within outside of the classroom.

• Peace Educators must serve as a models for the qualities and skills they are helping young people to develop in the peaceable classroom and school. This means, first and foremost and there is a need for teachers to take the challenge of personal transformation so they can credible agents of the peace message.

• What attributes, capacities and skills must a teacher of peace develop to enable him/her to be an effective medium of the peace message?

• The teacher of peace is a responsible citizen, an intentional agent of a culture of peace, a person of vision capable of hope and the imaging of the positive change.

• S/he is motivated by service and is actively involved in the community.

• s/he is a life long learner, one who continues to improve one’s ownlearning

• s/he is both a transmitter and a transformer of cultures.

• s/he is a seeker of mutually enhancing relationship.

• s/he is gender sensitive and alert to any possibility of gender bias in self students.

• A teacher of peace intentionally develops the capacity care by knowing the learners in their charge as individuals.

• s/he is an inquirer. S/he possess questions into the conditions that impede and those that enhance possibilities for achieving a culture of peace.

• S/he has the skills of reflective learning through which s/he applies what is learned from teaching to deepen his/her own understanding of the students and the learning processes.

• A teacher of peace has the skills of communication and conflict resolution.

• S/he practices cooperative learning by encouraging cooperative learning tasks and discouraging negative competition.

• A teacher of peace inspires understanding and alternative possibilities for the future and for a culture and peace.

Toward a Whole School Approach

To be more effective in infusing peace ideas, perspective and values into the life of the whole school and even beyond, it is suggested that a whole school approach be adopted.

• In a whole school approach, we try to engage all the learning areas, all the members of the school community and the wider community. The approach also includes other aspects of school life such as teaching practices and methods , students’ activities, administrative policies, school structures and relationships, as well as social action for and with the larger community.