When I was a first-year teacher, many years ago, I loved to watch my wonderful five-year-old block builders as they talked, constructed, and negotiated. But I noticed that one boy, Paul, sat a bit outside the group, watching rather than joining in. As I observed, I realized that when Paul did try to make a move into a game, he seemed unwelcome there.
I couldn’t see any reason for him to be excluded. To my adult eyes, he seemed like such a nice boy — I never saw him do anything annoying or aggressive. But when he asked to join their firefighting team, the fire was over, there was no room on the engine, they didn’t need another firefighter.
I knew from my own childhood what it was like to feel left out of a game, unwelcome on a team, picked last, and my heart went out to Paul. But I didn’t know what to say that would help. I was afraid that saying something might just draw attention to the fact that he was excluded and make him feel worse. How would I know if it would help?
Since that time, I have been learning, in my own classroom, how to empower children to stand up for themselves and others.
I discovered that in order to empower the children, the first and perhaps the most challenging thing I have to do is to give up the idea that I have the answers. My job is to provide the time and the structure for the children to find their own answers.
When I was in high school, two students I knew only a little were standing, one on each side of me, saying that you could always tell a Jew when you saw one. I wanted to say, “No, you can’t. I’m Jewish and you didn’t know that.” But I couldn’t get any words to come out, like a nightmare in which you try to talk but no sound comes from your mouth.
No adult could have imagined that scenario or prepared me to voice my feelings at that moment.
What children need in order to have the confidence to say what they feel in a strong and empowered way is to practice, in a safe environment, coming up with their own answers so that they gain the confidence that they know how they feel and to believe that others will listen to them.
We will not be able to stop all unkind behavior in children. According to Susan Engel and Marlene Sandstrom, from Williams College, in a New York Times op-ed piece, “There’s Only One Way to Stop a Bully,”1 in a 1995 study in Canada, researchers put video cameras in a school playground. They found that 4.5 overt acts of bullying took place per hour. Often the other children stood by and watched.
We can, however, teach children to stand up for themselves and for others. Unfortunately, today the strong emphasis on standardized test scores crowds out a curriculum that used to include more time for developing social skills. But we can imagine a world where children learn — in childcare and in school — to know who they are, how to express their ideas clearly and powerfully, and to stand up for themselves and others.
Engel and Sandstrom continued, “Children need to know that adults consider kindness and collaboration to be every bit as important as algebra and reading. In groups and one-on-one sessions, students and teachers should be having conversations about relationships every day. And, as obvious as it might sound, teachers can’t just preach kindness; they need to actually be nice to one another and to their students.”
Open-Ended Questions
The Olweus Bullying Prevention Program, a gold standard for thorough and well-researched anti-bullying work, has shown that schools that implement a program based on their values also see their students’ test scores go up. In Virginia, schools that had implemented the program saw a significant increase in test scores, including increases in scores in English, math, science, and history while bullying, vandalism, fighting, theft, and truancy were cut significantly.2
Classroom meetings are considered one of the most important parts of a successful anti-bullying program, and they can focus on aspects of bullying, conflict resolution, friendship, or communication. But how can we use these conversations most effectively?
First, I look for an open-ended question, one that I’m really curious about and one where I don’t know the answer. Asking the child involved what he or she thinks might be a good solution to a social problem is something I learned from my own daughter when she was in fourth grade. We had just moved from the University of Chicago community —where being different was seen as interesting, where people wore clothing from all over the world, and where ideas were held in high esteem — to a suburban community where there was a strong emphasis on conformity. Margaret was different. She wore unusual clothes, often including socks of two different colors, and she lived for the theater. She was having a hard time fitting in at her new school. She came home one day and told me that the girls on her bus threw spitballs at her. I was appalled. I wanted to go immediately to the principal, but she did not agree with that plan. I gave her suggestions of what she might say to the girls, but she argued with each of them. Finally, in frustration, I asked what she thought she should do. She gave it some thought and then said, “I think that I could say that on Mondays and Wednesdays, they can throw spitballs at me. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, I could throw spitballs at them, and on Fridays, no one would throw spitballs.”
I tried to hide my skepticism at her idea. And for the next few days, I tried to keep silent, avoiding what psychologist Michael Thompson calls “interviewing for pain,” not asking, “Did those mean girls throw spitballs again?” Finally, after a few days, I couldn’t hold it in any longer. “So, how’s it going on the bus?” I tried to be casual about it. She acted surprised, as though at first she wasn’t sure what I was talking about. Then she remembered, “Oh, I guess they stopped. It hasn’t happened since I told them my idea.”
Why did it stop? I believe it was because she knew how she felt, she expressed her expectation of fairness in an unusual but strong way, and they responded to that.
Asking a child, “What do you think you could do about it?” is one way to help that child understand how he or she feels and to practice expressing those feelings in a safe setting.
I also use open-ended questions to solve problems in whole class discussions. I do this if the problem comes up at a time when we’re all together, and I also do it when I think the children involved are stuck and will benefit from hearing from the group that there is a solution that satisfies everyone. (I like the word solution rather than compromise because compromising implies that no one gets quite what he or she wants, while I believe that most of the time, when children listen to one another, they can find solutions that everyone in the group finds fully satisfying.) When I ask the whole group to think about solutions to a problem, we first collect ideas, without debating, agreeing, or disagreeing with them. Then I ask the children involved if any of these ideas might work for them. We often act out one or more of these possibilities, giving the children more opportunities to experience standing up for themselves in a safe setting.
The Solution Discussion
This is an example of a whole class discussion I had in my kindergarten.3
Zoe was one of the most difficult five-year-olds I had worked with. Some would call her a bully, although I do not believe this would be an accurate use of the term. Bullying is when someone repeatedly and on purpose says or does mean or hurtful things to another person who has a hard time defending himself or herself.4 Zoe’s behaviors could be very hurtful to other children, but I think that most of the time, they came from her anxieties, not from a wish to hurt others. She didn’t specifically target children who were younger or weaker than she was, and she didn’t usually team up with others in order to outnumber a victim. So although she could be difficult and manipulative and sometimes made other children unhappy, I did not consider her a bully.
Toby, in the same class as Zoe, also liked to have things his way. He especially wanted to be first in line and would jump over or run into anything in his way to get to the door first when it was time for gym or art. So I decided that the children would line up in alphabetical order with a different line leader each day.
The day after Zoe was line leader, it was her turn to be last. “I don’t want to be the caboose!” she wailed, refusing to go to the end of the line.
“Zoe,” I told her, “we’ll try to solve this problem, but here’s what I want you to do: We’re going to collect ideas from everyone who has a way we might solve this and you listen to all of them without interrupting. And then at the end, we’ll see if any of them might work. OK?”
This was a bit risky. She might like an idea that was unacceptable to me or to many other children. They might give in to her rather than have to put up with her tantrums. Or the other children might express their exasperation with Zoe, and that would almost certainly send her into a tantrum.
How do I deal with the possibility that this discussion could go wrong and even make things worse? I have confidence that eventually we can come to a solution that will work, even if we don’t get there immediately. I am willing to say, “Since we haven’t come to an agreement, today, we’re going to do it my way. But we’ll come back to this tomorrow and see if we can come up with a solution that everyone can feel good about.” The children are used to the idea that not every problem can be solved immediately, and they know I will circle back to it and try again.
Brooke is Zoe’s friend and has the first suggestion. “Maybe every time she’s last, she can go in front of someone else,” she says. “Or ask if someone else would like to go last.”
“Well,” says Toby, “they could stand next to the person.”
“I could be the caboose with her,” Gwyn says.
“You don’t mind?” I ask.
“It’s OK with me,” she says.
“I would like to be the caboose,” Caleb says.
“Zoe could, like, go behind the line leader so she could be the door holder,” Michelle suggests.
“No, not always,” Brooke says. This is going too far. She likes to hold the door, the job of the second in line.
“She doesn’t have to mind because she’s in the back, “ Michelle says. “She could pretend that somebody’s in back of her.”
“Well,” Zoe says, “what we could do is when it’s my turn to be the caboose, there could be two people in the caboose at a time. So, all the time there would be two people at the end of the line.”
“So, the person last in line could choose to be partners with the person who’s next to the last?” I say.
“Yes!” several children shout.
“Does everyone agree?” I ask.
They agree by acclamation.
Rather than learning that the person with the most power wins, Zoe learned that by listening to others, she could find a solution that worked for everyone and was fair for all. She learned this, not because I told her, but through her own experience.
Practicing Problem-Solving
These discussions take time, as children learn to explain their ideas and listen to others. As they practice, they will do it more easily. Often, after they have been doing this for a while, they will come in from recess and tell me about a problem they solved on their own, without needing help from a teacher. As they learn to solve problems, rather than to just sweep them under the rug, they are able to concentrate more fully on whatever is next on the schedule. We’ve all experienced what it is like to try to focus on a subject when there’s an unresolved conflict that is claiming most of our attention. If we help children resolve those conflicts, they can then move on to whatever comes next. I believe that’s why the test scores go up when teachers make time for this process.
One day after school, I was walking through the common room on my way home. I stopped to watch the after-school group as they were playing games, making crafts, and building with blocks. I stopped abruptly as I saw several eight-, nine- and ten-year-old boys building a five-foot-high structure built out of large, hollow blocks with small unit blocks at the top for decoration. At the very top was a large, hand-drawn swastika.
My first impulse was to tell them to take it down. Most of these boys had been kindergarteners in my class, and I had no problem telling them what to do. But as I walked toward them, I became curious. Did they know what the swastika stood for and why it might be offensive? I told them that in my family, when we went to my grandparents’ house for holidays, my grandfather would look at me, his eyes would tear up, and he would call me by my middle name: he would say, “Tema … Tema.” I knew that I had been named after his sister, who had been killed in a concentration camp. I felt as though in some mysterious way, she lived inside me.
I told the boys, in their dark sweatshirts with their hoods up, that when I walked into the room and saw the swastika, I felt as though someone in that room wanted me to be dead, too.
They were stunned. They had clearly had no idea that someone might react that way. I felt my talk had been successful, and I was getting ready to leave when they said they wanted to tell me about their project. They were independently studying World War II, and their blocks depicted a town right before the Allied forces were about to come in. The swastika was going to be taken down and an Allied flag would be put up.
I asked if there was a different flag they could use, one that would not upset people walking through the common room. They said they could put up the Maltese Cross, a symbol of German pride that might not have the same negative connotations as the swastika. I left as they were deciding what the flag of the Allies might be.
I love this example because it shows how much more interesting kids are when we are honest with them and when we listen to them. But I also like it because it shows that we don’t need to do it perfectly. It took me three tries before I listened to them rather than, first, making assumptions about what they were doing and, second, lecturing them. Even though I work on listening to kids every day, even though I’ve been working on this issue for decades, when I felt threatened, I reverted back into a stance of being the expert, knowing the answers, like a toddler reaching back for his father’s pant leg when faced with a stranger. But when, on my third try, I listened to what they had to say, I was fascinated by their ideas. And we all discovered that we could learn from one another and find a solution that respected our differing needs.
We can imagine a world where children learn in school to know how they feel and to stand up for what they believe. And we can create such a world in our own environments— by knowing that we don’t have all the answers and by listening to the children.
Notes
1. Susan Engel and Marlene Sandstrom, “There’s Only One Way to Stop a Bully,” New York Times, July 22, 2010. Accessed May 4, 2016. www.nytimes.com/2010/07/23/opinion/23engel.html.
2. From Violence Prevention Works, the website of the Olweus Bullying Prevention Program, as of May 13, 2015.
3. Jane Katch, They Don’t Like Me: Lessons on Bullying and Teasing from a Preschool Classroom, Beacon Press, 2003. Pages 69–70.
4. “Reduce Bullying, Raise Test Scores,” Violence Prevention Works. Accessed May 4, 2016. www.violencepreventionworks.org/public/virginia_study.page.