How to Reduce Violence in American Culture: The Peace Rose

When I heard the news about the bombing in Boston, I felt overwhelmed with the pervasive, continuing violence in American society. I want to believe that we can change this, and since I’m not a politician, I turn to what I know best: education. How can we as teachers change this culture and move away from such violence? After all, every person who commits a violent crime was once a kindergartener.

What would happen if we put the same amount of effort into helping children learn social and emotional skills that we put into helping them learn academics?

Every day in our classrooms we have the opportunity to make the world a more peaceful place. We must start by teaching children how to be kind, how to care for one another, how to solve problems, and by making sure all children feel a sense of love and belonging. This is not idealistic. It can be done and it is within our control. As we change the culture of children and the culture of schools, this can have a deeper effect on the adults that our children will become.

Here’s one lovely idea that I got from Elizabeth Hickey who works at the Oak Meadow Montessori School in Massachusetts. We met at a conference of the Mindfulness in Education Network. She uses the Peace Rose method to help her preschoolers learn how to problem solve:

"The Peace Rose method of problem solving allows children to recognize and express their own feelings as well as learn respect for the other child’s feelings. A vase holding the peace rose is made available to the children at all times. The children are taught how to handle and care for the Peace Rose. When a conflict arises one child will get the Peace Rose. While holding the Peace Rose the child can express what they did not like or how they feel to the other child. When they are done they pass the rose to the other child. Respect for the other persons turn to talk is stressed. The children are encouraged to use “I” words such as “I didn’t like it when you hit me”. Abusive or unkind language is not used when holding the Peace Rose. When the two children reach a solution or simply get over their difficulty they put their hands on the rose and say, ‘we declare peace’, or ‘friends’."

This excerpt is from Problem Solving in the Pre-Primary Montessori Classroom & The Peace Rose Method by Maggie Natzel. I encourage you to read the full document.

Let’s take some positive action to create a more peaceful culture in the U.S. Please share in the comments any other suggestions or activities you have used successfully to help establish a peaceful culture in your classroom.

Pay Attention! How to Help Children Focus in the Classroom

My student teachers have just submitted behavioral support plans for children with challenging behavior in their classrooms. One of the things I noticed was the prevalence of children who are having trouble paying attention to instruction. This might be the preschooler who can’t sit still during circle time or the 3^rd grader who can’t stay on task during seatwork, or the 1^st grader who stares into space during group instruction.

Most of my student teachers assume that the problem is one of motivation – that the children are just not trying hard enough to pay attention or they are not held accountable for their actions and need to be pushed harder. They are missing the possibility that these children don’t know how to pay attention.

Some children (and adults!) do not have the skills to maintain focus. This is part of what psychologists call “Executive Function” and it involves the pre-frontal cortex of the brain. When this skill is underdeveloped, it makes it hard for a child to control her impulses, maintain focus, and hold information in her working memory. It’s not really the case that the child can’t pay attention – it’s that she can’t pay attention to what you want her to pay attention to. Many children, especially those with ADHD, pay attention to everything happening around them, and can’t selectively focus on one thing. The good news is that paying attention can be taught.

In order to help a child learn to focus, you need to treat this as a skill that must be learned and practiced – just like learning the alphabet or how to multiply. Here are some strategies you can use:

Chunks & Breaks: Present the work to the child in smaller “chunks” that can be done in smaller stretches of time. If you want a preschooler to focus during circle time, have him participate for five minutes, then allow him to take a break and work at table toys for a few minutes and then repeat the demand to sit at circle. Be sure your circle time activities are interactive! If the child is in primary grades and needs to do seatwork, break up the work into smaller sections. After working on an assignment for five minutes, the child can get up and get a drink, walk around the room, and then sit down and start again. Eventually, when the child is successful at this, you can extend the amount of time before getting a break. If the child is having trouble, shorten the amount of time.

Timers: When used as a self-monitoring device, timers can help children gain some self-control. They can be used to help a child stay focused and take a break, as described above, or they can be set for smaller increments, say 30 seconds or a minute, to help children self-monitor. When the timer goes off, the child can check whether or not he is paying attention and on task. It’s important to let the child hold and monitor the timer so that he gets a sense of self regulation.

Cues: Be sure to give appropriate cues to let children know it’s important to pay attention. Not everything we say and do is of equal importance, so engage in a hand-clapping routine, or ring a bell, or do a call and response chant to be sure that you have all the children focused before giving directions, explaining a new activity, starting a story, etc. There are a number of  Brain Based Teaching Strategies that can help with this.

Meditation. Research shows that mindfulness meditation can help children and adults improve attention, focus, and self control. I recently observed an urban, public preschool classroom in which all the children sat cross-legged for about 5 minutes with their eyes closed, focusing on quieting their bodies and noticing their breathing. I wouldn’t have believed it had I not seen it firsthand. Some of the children struggled to quiet their bodies more than others, but all were successful at quietly maintaining their stillness. Here’s a lovely article on meditation techniques that worked for one mom. Here’s a meditation video that gives you the idea of how you might guide meditation when first teaching it to children:

Give Feedback When Children Pay Attention. Often we give children a lot of attention for being off-task: we remind them to pay attention or sit still, we call their names, we walk over to them, we sit next to them, we hold their hands. All of these actions reinforce the children’s off-task behavior. Instead, connect to children while they are focusing. Say things like, “I notice that you are working hard. I see that you are sitting still. You’ve been working for 5 minutes without stopping.” Move next to children when they are focused. Tap their shoulder and let them know they are doing a good job. Ignore the little times that they lose focus. The need your feedback and support.

What have you found helps children to learn attention skills? Please share in the comments what has worked for you or any questions you have.

Calming the Beast: 4 Stories of Classroom Success

Last week in my Classroom Management course, my student teachers all chose a social or emotional skill to teach their class. The purpose for this is to help prevent behavior problems. Many children act out because they don't have the ability to express themselves appropriately, to control their impulses or to calm down. By proactively teaching these skills, we can create a calmer classroom with more mature behavior.

 

I am going to highlight four of my students' work because they had good insights into what the students in their classrooms needed and they came up with creative approaches to teaching the children how to calm down. It just so happens that all of them are working in first grade classrooms.

Soothing Sounds by Vanessa Sanchez: Every time after lunch, the students know they are suppose to enter the class room and put their heads down so they can relax. At this time the lights are turned off. When I first started my internship I saw how well each child listened to the instructions and how well they went with putting their heads down and relaxing. Lately, I was seeing students drawing or play with their pencils, as if a space ship were flying around their desk in slow motion. I decided to continue and follow up with their heads down because I did not want to change the skill that the students already knew. I just thought it would be a great idea to add in the soothing music for about two to three minutes.

The first day the kids came into the classroom and I told them to please put their heads down and relax. The lights were already turned off and I told them that I would like to show them something that will help them relax and calm down and it is called soothing music. I told them there will be times in which I will ask them what they heard and there will be times in which I will not ask them. I went on the SmartBoard and connected on to YouTube and played a relaxing piano piece. At first they began to smile and I could tell by their faces they began to enjoy it. The next day I searched on YouTube for relaxing/soothing music and I found one on river sounds.

The more I kept on reinforcing this new strategy, the more the students began to keep their heads down and they seemed more relaxed. It is as if the students look forward to hearing what I will play. Coming up from lunch some students would ask me, "I wonder what calming music you will show us." With a smile on my face, I replied "I can't tell you but I'm sure it will be something calm and relaxing." I have seen how well it works for the entire class that I decided I will not just do it for a week. It is something that I will continue to do until my internship is done. 

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Time to Think by Ibelis Gonzalez: In my class the children always seem to be extra noisy after lunch.  Because the weather has been cold, the first graders do not have a chance to go outside and are not permitted to use the gym for recess. They stay in the lunchroom for the whole forty-five minute period where they can basically be as loud as they want.  To get the children to relax and transition back to classroom time I created a stillness time when they return from the lunchroom. 

 

Before we go to the lunchroom I ask the children to give me a few topics that they will like to think about during relaxation time.  I put a few topics on the board and leave them there until we return. When we come back the children can pick one of the topics and think about it with their heads on their hands. The first time I did this I started with one minute but when I asked the children to pick up their heads they actually said “Ms. Gonzalez, that’s not enough time to think!”  I gave them two more minutes and decided to stay with the three minute period.  After we walk into the class and everyone settles down, we read the topics as a class, and then I start a timer and say “Ready, Set, Think!”  When the timer goes off, I use shuffle cards with each child’s name on them and randomly call on a few students to share what they were thinking.  After the children share what they were thinking their card goes to the bottom of the stack so this way each child will have a chance to share at least once a week.  

When I first started doing this I explained to the children that the topics they choose should be relaxing topics because the reason we are doing this activity every day after lunch is to relax our minds after we fed them. As a class the students discussed what kind of topics and scenarios would be considered relaxing. We also discussed that what one person may think is relaxing may not be the same for someone else. The children are not limited to choosing one of the topics on the white board; they are free to think about whatever they like. They are also free to just relax with their head down if that’s what they feel like doing for that three-minute time frame. This strategy has definitely made the transition smoother and also gives my cooperating teacher and myself a few moments to relax ourselves and prepare for the next lesson. 

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Stillness Time by Vanessa Franco. Stillness Time is a skill that actually worked out perfectly because our weekly reading connection was based on imagination. Before I began this skill I had already taught the students to close their eyes after the reading to imagine the scenario of the current story. At times I would ask students to close their eyes as I read two pages. I would then ask them to open them. My children had done great in closing their eyes, maintaining quiet, and demonstrating a sense of using their imagination to visualize what we had just read. 

I was then able to incorporate this in the morning lesson right before our read aloud. I now approached the students with using the same technique of closing their eyes to not only imagine but to listen. The response of a few students was interesting. Some students responded with, “I can’t listen with my eyes closed” or “Closing your eyes is to imagine or dream only.” This was the point that I felt was difficult because I had to find a way to keep the children on task and convince them this was going to be just as fun. Eventually the students closed their eyes as I walked them through listening to the quietness of our class and the quietness of how well we are working together to feel relaxed as a whole class. Somehow, this skill had worked as planned. I began with the starting point of one minute to now starting at three minutes. Perhaps the use of imagination helped me enforce this skill!

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Counting Breaths by Jessenia Acevedo.  A child I will call Victor is an eight-year-old boy in my first grade inclusion classroom. He is very bright and friendly, but when he is angry or bothered he is quick to become aggressive both verbally and physically. Most of the time, Victor is a charming student and has a lot of friends. He enjoys helping his classmates and loves working in groups, but if other students don’t agree with him he becomes angry and snaps at them.  After he reacts in an unkindly manner, he removes himself from the group and sits in a corner alone. 

I decided to help Victor to learn to control his outbursts and to keep his hands to himself.  One day I took Victor to the side and told him, “Victor you work well with your friends and you always help others when they ask you for help. That is excellent but sometimes you lose control and yell at your friends or hit them, how do you think that makes them feel?”  Victor responded, “I know. It’s just sometimes I get frustrated and I yell at them. They don’t listen to me.”  I told Victor that I wanted to help and would like for him to try a technique to control his frustration.  Victor was very excited and was willing to try this new deep breathing exercise.  

I explained to Victor that being able to control your breath is the easiest and most effective way to keep calm. I told him that whenever he felt himself getting frustrated or angry, to think of a number from one to ten, say it aloud, and take that many amount of breaths to help keep him calm. If he was really angry then he would have a high number of deep breaths to take and if he was not so angry then he would take a fewer amounts of breaths. I modeled this technique with him and role-played a few situations with him by using the flower and candle method.  

Victor did well during the role play but when a real situation occurred he still had outbursts. The first two days I stood close to Victor when he was at group and when I saw that he was growing frustrated I shouted a number and he began to take deep breaths. At the end of the day, Victor said “Ms. Jessenia that felt good. It really relaxed me and I didn’t yell.” On the third day, Victor had an incident with one of his classmates and he shouted “Ms. Jessenia – Seven!” And he took seven deep breaths. I walked over to him and gave him a high five. The following day, Victor was taking breaths on his own every time he had a situation where he felt he was feeling frustrated. When he did react in an inappropriate way he said “I apologize” right away and added, “I’ll count to 10 next time!”  By the end of the week, Victor was controlling his frustration by the deep breathing exercise and was extremely proud of himself.  

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I want to deeply thank my student teachers for sharing these ideas. How about you? Please share in the comments any ideas you’ve tried for keeping your classroom calm!

Need more advice? Check out The Positive Classroom book for more ideas, techniques, and strategies!

How to Help Parents with Homework Battles

I received the following email this week which got me thinking about how to help parents who find themselves in homework battles:

“Thank you for sharing techniques to calm down children. I am a mother of an 8 year old extremely bright boy. Mario becomes very nervous when it is time to do homework. Yesterday, for instance, he had to copy two pages of math and it took him 4 hours to complete 1 page. He does not want to do it, gets up or gets distracted or draws or whatever. I try talking to him explaining the importance, etc., but to no avail.  Then he cries and cries and says it makes him nervous. When he finally does it he finishes in a flash.  Is this a common problem? At school he is fine. What can I do?”

When my own three children were in elementary school, I found that this was common. My friends complained frequently of their frustration over homework and the chaos that happened each evening.  Here are some suggestions that might help tame the homework beast:

Homework Tips for Teachers:

• Teach children how to do homework effectively. Spend time in class “practicing” homework. Skills can include how to get materials out and ready, how to get started, how to take breaks, where to put homework to bring it to school, etc. Parents can reinforce this, of course, be we are the ones who should start the children off on the right track. I’d recommend at least a week of practice in school.
• Assign interesting homework activities, NOT just busy work. Ask the children to write down how long they spend on their homework and put it in the corner of the paper. This will help you determine if you are assigning too much. The same assignment that an 8 year old can do in 20 minutes at school might take much longer at home when he is tired.
• Make sure the children are capable of doing the work independently.
• If you have children whose living circumstances are such that their family cannot provide support for homework, give the child time in school to get the work done. Don’t criticize or get angry. Young children do not choose the parents or family they have! Here are more ideas from the Responsive Classroom.

Homework Tips for Parents

You’ve probably already gotten advice on setting up a quiet area for your child, establishing a schedule, checking the homework, etc. Here are some other important tricks:

• Give your child breaks. By the end of the day, most children are tired and can only focus for a very short period of time. You can set a timer for five minutes and then offer break rewards (quick snack, drink, free play) if the child has stayed on task. The break should also be short – maybe 5 minutes or so, and then the child should get right back to work.
• Break the work down. Instead of setting a timer, you can have your child do one problem, one line, one paragraph, etc – whatever is appropriate for his age.
• Give LOTS of attention to your child when he does a little bit of work. Too often children get attention by NOT working. When they stop working, slow down, or refuse, they get your attention – often in a big way! Turn this around. After, say, five minutes of work, give positive feedback and spend a few minutes talking with your child. Your attention is often the most powerful reward a child can get. DO NOT criticize, cajole, complain, beg, threaten, or preach. Instead, praise, praise, and praise – even little acts like sitting down and getting out the pencil.
• Give feedback to the teacher. If your child is spending longer than you think he should on the homework, be sure to let the teacher know. Don’t be embarrassed that it will reflect badly on your child – most teachers will be very grateful to get this feedback.

Finally, don’t make homework too important. In the total scope of things, it’s not that big a deal. Research shows that homework does not affect children’s achievement in the early grades. It’s more important that children learn to work independently for a short while then that they do lots of perfect work.

Please share ideas that have worked for you in the comments!

Need more advice? Check out The Positive Classroom book for more ideas, techniques, and strategies!

5 Procedures for Peaceful Problem-Solving: Learning from Martin Luther King, Jr.

            What is the most important message that young children can get from remembering and celebrating the life of Martin Luther King, Jr.? Peaceful problem-solving.

            I recently read a wonderful post by Teaching Ace in which she shared how she focuses in her kindergarten class on Dr. King’s life as a peaceful problem solver. Her class creates a “Peace Book” reminding them of strategies they can use to solve problems. Given the amount of high-profile violence in our country recently, this is a much needed message. Here are some other activities for helping children become peaceful problem-solvers that can be incorporated into your Martin Luther King Day celebrations: 

• Persona Dolls – these dolls, designed for anti-bias education, have a specific name, personality, and history. They can help you bring up difficult topics and get the children to empathize with being left out, bullied, rejected, or treated unfairly. Through role play, children can learn to defend others when they observe someone being treated poorly, and to intervene peacefully as an anti-bias strategy.
• Class Meetings – during the day, have a clipboard available in which children can draw or write about a problem they notice in the classroom. At group meeting time, review the problem and ask the children to brainstorm some possible solutions. Pick one solution, try it out, and review how well it’s working a few days later. Here's a great example from a 2nd grade classroom:

• Social Stories or Scripted Stories – these hand-made books are written in first person and focus on a specific problem that a child is encountering – such as expressing anger appropriately. Originally designed to teach children on the autism spectrum social skills, they are an excellent tool for all children. The Peace Book by Teaching Ace is a great example of a social story for the whole class.
• Peaceful Words – in order to be peaceful, children need to learn how to use peaceful words. Generate a list of kind things you can say to each other, post in on chart paper and read it daily. Be sure to give positive feedback when you hear children using peaceful words.
• Community Building Activities. In the middle of the school year, it can be helpful to revisit some of the “getting-to-know-you” activities that you did in September. Children need to feel a sense of group cohesion and learn to care about the group -- not just a few friends -- in order to want to solve problems peacefully. By revisiting these often, you can build deep respect, caring, and commitment to being a peaceful community.

How are you celebrating the message of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.? Please share your ideas in the comments!