Conflict in the Classroom:
Respect and Resolution in Montessori School
A new school year is a great time to assess how you are helping your child to become increasingly competent with various life skills. Montessori principles focus on how to help a child be more independent with skills such as washing dishes and putting away their work.
These skills all depend on the child having appropriate tools to complete the tasks. The same is true for helping a child face social-emotional tasks. It is important that we take time to consider whether the child has the social emotional tools to handle challenges that may come up each day.
It is important to remember that during the second plane of development (6-12 years of age), children are developing physically, mentally, and emotionally. In addition to the turmoil happening internally and externally, children may be faced with a number of new challenges at school, including teasing and exclusion by classmates, that interrupts positive growth and attitudes toward school and learning.
Montessori schools are no exception to these kinds of behaviours, but our approach to dealing with these issues turns these challenges into opportunities for teaching respect and empathy from the very beginning.
Here are a few philosophies and processes we adhere to when it comes to teaching respect and resolving conflict, both inside and outside the classroom:
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