Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Conflict is Necessary


Ultimately, work in the classroom for me boils down to what kind of little characters is our environment forming. I get very troubled sometimes when there's days that a barrage of conflicts occur. Our "peace flower" is well worn and kind of shabby looking after just 6 months of use. For this reason, I pulled out ye-old "P.E.T" (Parent Effectiveness Training) yesterday and re-read the chapter on conflict to remind myself that conflict is a part of life and not necessarily an evil.

Experiencing conflict and learning how to cope with it early on will prepare the children for how to deal with it later in life. Provided the conflict gets resolved constructively... "This is the critical factor in any relationship," says the author Thomas Gordon, "how conflicts get resolved, not how many conflicts occur." I guess it's a great thing then, that we get those days with lots of conflict resolution practice in our environment.

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