“Education is the vaccine for violence”
Edward
James Olmos
I was listening to the news on my way to the office recently and was
quite appalled by what I was hearing.
They were discussing the increasing number of violent incidents in our
schools. A few people who called in, one
of those callers being a teacher, correlated the increasing number of children
with needs in the classroom to the increasing reports of violence. Nice simplification of a complex issue.
When
you really delve into the statistics (see: http://chatnewstoday.ca/article/513648/ns-releases-data-violence-faced-teachers-1800-incidents-last-year) the majority of
the incidents took place at the elementary school level. Which
on the surface might suggest that our children are becoming more violent, but let’s
employ some common sense here.
Children
do not know how to behave until we teach them, and, like any new skill, they
need opportunity to practice it before they master it. We tend to tell children what not to do (keep
your hands to yourself, don’t be rude, etc.) but don’t often tell them what to
do instead if they are experiencing frustration and feel the need to act out in
response. In a previous blog post I
referred to the Zones Of Regulation.
This is a great program to aid children with recognizing their feelings
and offering tools on how to response appropriately.
Our
family has benefited from having a child with needs. This may sound strange, but the reason why I
say this is because we have become better able to recognize emotional
responses, not only in our son, but in other people as well. I also understand that all people, adults and
children included, need to have a sense of control. Control over their environments and their
person. We can empower children, not by
telling them what to do, but by helping them voice what they need in the moment
(for example s time away from the classroom).
We all have bad days, and that is
okay. However, there are also
consequences to our actions. I agree with
consequences, but also that we need to treat incidents of aggression as
learning moments. Not only asking the
child what s/he could have done differently, but also asking ourselves what we
could have done to prevent the incident.
Finally,
I would like to point out that there have always been children with needs in
our classrooms, regardless of whether there is inclusion or not. Many children are not adequately assessed, or
assessed at all. And, all children make
errors in judgement. They are human
after all!
I
welcome your comments and input as always.
