Welcome back to this week’s segment of After School Tea Time! Get your tea cups ready because we have more to spill this week! Keep your questions coming because you could be helping someone who has similar questions!
Question from Hartford County- There are two students in our program who started out as really good friends. They were constantly together and always doing activities with each other. Recently, it seems like they had some sort of falling out. They don’t do activities with each other anymore and have argued with each other multiple times. The situation has escalated to the point where we have to sit them on opposite sides of the classroom and keep them separated during activities. Their behavior towards each other has become disruptive to our classroom. Do you have any suggestions on how we can handle this?
Hey Hartford, thank you for asking this question. Conflict between students can be difficult to handle. It’s important that both students are given the opportunity to speak about the situation. Here are a few suggestions that you can consider. Before contacting parents/guardians I would try to have individual conversations with each student to hear each perspective. Ask questions to understand how the conflict started in first place. After having the individual conversations, if your program has a mediator, reach out to them and explain the situation. Set up a time for the students to talk with the mediator together. If talking with a mediator does not help, then you should contact the parents/guardians of both students and explain what has been happening. The situation has become disruptive to the classroom, and it shouldn’t continue further if both students can’t resolve the issue by talking it out. Here is an article with tips on how to manage classroom conflicts. We hope this helps!
We’ll see you next week for another segment of After School Tea Time! Don’t forget to submit your anonymous questions here.