Tiniest Teachers offer the Greatest Lesson The Greatest Lesson took me by surprise. Recently, I’ve been suffering compassion fatigue. Every Sunday I take a nursing home resident to church with me. It seems the helpful thing to do, and she always voices her gratitude as we leave the services. But I couldn’t shake the feeling […]
Showing You Care “Carry out a random act of kindness, with no expectation of reward, safe in the knowledge that one day someone might do the same for you.” Princess Diana Teach Peace Now‘s theme for the month of April is Caring and Compassion. All month we will be presenting books, activities, and thoughts about […]
Solving Conflicts through Nonviolence Nonviolence seems like a harmless idea rooted in compassionate and peaceful interests. Why is it then that practitioners of nonviolence are often seen as enemies of the state? Mark Kurlansky’s book Nonviolence: The History of a Dangerous Idea illuminates that dark corner where economic, religious and state power often collude to […]
Addressing Name Calling Through Children’s Books Name calling does so much damage. It leads to hurt feelings, broken friendships, anger, and even war. The best way to address name calling is to develop our children’s empathy for those who are the victim and provide them with great examples. The following picture books contain empathetic characters and […]
A major cause of conflict between people and groups is misunderstanding each other. There are many reasons for this. Each of us has our own unique upbringing and belief system. We may speak different languages and have different value systems. We may even have different ideas about what makes something true. By understanding more about […]
Consensus is defined as finding the middle ground between total agreement and total disagreement. A consensus means that everyone has come together to agree on one thing. In a consensus, there are no winners or losers. Everyone accepts the final solution or decision and understands why that is the best decision for the conflict. It’s […]
You probably think name calling is something only children do. After all, name calling is one of the most common ways that conflict starts between children, especially on the playground out of the eye of the teacher. What child hasn’t been called a name? However, name calling doesn’t end on the playground. It pervades our […]
Before you can solve a conflict, you have to recognize not only that there is a conflict, but also what type of conflict it is. Violent conflict is obvious. But sometimes the most pervasive and most difficult to see are conflicts are those that lie below the surface. The same thing is true of the […]
One reason people have conflicts with others is that they have preconceived ideas about the people they disagree with. By facing their own stereotypes and then learning ways in which their opponents are similar to them, people who have disagreements can learn to work with people different from themselves to come to a compromise. This […]
What is conflict? Before we can talk about resolving conflicts we need to define what we mean by conflict. Conflict Conflicts can take many forms. Sometimes only two people are involved. Other times, it may involve groups of nations and lead to war. Conflicts occur when: When people share different personal values. For example one […]
Have you ever tried to describe the color of your skin? For fiction writers, especially those writing multicultural books and those for children, coming up with color names to describe skin is an ongoing challenge. Coming up with color names for skin often crops up with children’s lessons on racism and in literature classes, too. A teacher, […]
Have you ever looked closely at your skin color? Is all the same color everywhere on your body? Does it stay the same color all the time? You have probably answered no to these questions. So why is it that society puts people into groups based on a few basic colors? Why do we assign […]
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