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13
T
he children gathered around the small green plas-
tic table eagerly. Their photos and drawings were
pasted all over it. They seemed to be quite famil-
iar with it. “Why do we use this table?” asked
May Chehab, their KG1 teacher looking around at them.
Little hands shot up in the air.
“If someone hits you we come here,” offered one small boy.
“If someone bumps my head, we come here,” added a
little girl.
But Omar seemed to have the right answer.
“You come here and talk if someone takes
your toys,” he said.
And then,
added Lara knowingly, “you say: why did you take my toy?”
Chehab looked pleased. She has been using a “conflict reso-
lution table” in her classroom of four-year-olds for the past
three years and it has been a resounding success every time.
“It is the students who came up with this idea,” said
Chehab. “The theme of discussion at the time was family
and friends. I asked them: if you have a problem with a
friend what do you do?”
Children and teacher brainstormed. Finally, the students
decided that the answer was to find a comfortable place
and talk about it.
Chehab hit on the idea of getting a small table. She
remembered seeing a discarded plastic table in the hall-
way. The children set about pasting their pictures on it
and an official “conflict resolution table” was born.
The table has since taken a prominent place in the class-
room. At first, Chehab had to guide them to it when
arguments erupted. But slowly, she would look around
to see some of the children themselves gathering around
it to air out their grievances to one another.
“This builds communicating skills, it teaches different
points of views, and helps them to solve their own prob-
lems,” said Chehab.
The table also became central when the next
class theme centered on feelings. Early in the
mornings, each child would place their name
next to a drawing of a face on a chart showing
the basic feelings: happy, sad, and angry,
excited and tired. As discussions progressed,
the children learned to express these feelings
at the conflict resolution table.
And then came a time when the students
themselves took matters into their own
hands. One little girl had a habit of taking
several books to read during rest time.
This apparently greatly annoyed her
classmates. As Chehab watched unde-
tected, the girl was summoned by her
peers to the table. She was firmly told
that the others feel deprived of those
books that she takes with her. The girl
meekly put them back and since then
only takes one book out at a time.
Chehab was amazed. “I felt sorry for
the girl,” she said laughing. “But I’ve
never felt prouder of all of them.”
DON’T JUST SNATCH MY TOYS
!
LET’ S TALK ABOUT IT
!