Sunday, March 27, 2011

Conflict Resolution Day 1

Thursday was the first day of the Conflict Resolution training course for the 10th graders. I have been preparing for this course since I got the green light to work on it. I thought I was prepared walking into class this morning, but I definitely did not anticipate what was coming.

We started doing all the planned activities in class, and the kids were participating and they seemed to be engaged. I was trying to keep control of the class, so I didn't notice that one of the kids was being bothered by the kids around him. All of a sudden, he stood up and stormed out of the class. I asked Dorit- the educational counselor who's been working with him and his personal problems- to step out and make sure he was alright. When they both left, the class started to talk amongst themselves and instead of continuing on with the activity, I asked them to talk about what happened.

The students said they were wondering why he left the class, and I asked them to tell me why they thought he left (I hadn't seen anything happen among the kids, so I wasn't sure). One of the students said she thought maybe someone had said something that made him upset. Then, the guys sitting in close proximity to the kid that left almost started talking when Dorit came back into the class. As soon as she stepped in, the student who was going to say something stopped himself and someone else, trying to cover for him, started talking about the bomb the day before.

I took what started as a cover-up response, and started a conversation about the bomb, and we started relating the concepts that we had been talking about before to the real life situation. An Arab student said he was scared because he said that if he sits on a public bus, for example, and some Jews hear him speaking Arabic, they might hit him or insult him. I took that story and brought it back to stereotyping (a concept we were learning about) and its role in conflict. Someone else talked about how life is conflict...pretty intense stuff!

I was surprised that these ideas were brought up in class on the first day, but I'm really excited it happened. I see a great opportunity here to- if nothing else- create a safe environment so they can talk about how they see themselves in this conflict. I've somewhat discarded by first plan about these five weeks and I'm now adapting it to something that I think will be more relevant and suitable for these kids.

It is definitely different teaching about conflict resolution to kids that live in a conflict zone. I'm so excited about this new challenge and I hope I can make this a worthwhile learning experience for the kids.

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