Entries Tagged 'Rights of the Child' ↓

Thanks again to the inquisitive and life-long learning folk at Child Care Exchange Magazine. I really enjoyed their daily email today about some of the writings of Lilian Katz from Intellectual Emergencies: Some Reflections on Mothering and Teaching. I was struck by a comment she made about this frequently used comment: “We don’t do that at this school.” and “Why should a teacher say to a child who just grabbed a stapler from another one, ‘We don’t do that in this class!’ when the child just did it?” I remember the teacher on my first teaching practice using this strategy and I have on occasion used it myself. But of course it doesn’t make sense! We are also denying and devaluing the child’s experience or the strategies they have used to  of cope or deal with an experience.

She comments that this creates a “phony classroom culture”. What really struck me was her comment this “fails to involve children in making good sense of their experience and environment.” She also talked about a teacher who had used a cardboard tiger and when she got annoyed with the children she would say “the tigers getting grumpy with you”. Ms. Katz asked why the children were asked to respond to the feelings of a tiger and not the feelings of their teacher. I tried this this morning (feeling like a cardboard teacher with my cold!). Some boys were having a chat while I was talking about were going to do in the library and I said “I feel really bad when you talk over me, when I’m talking to the whole class. Did you realise that?” I got a pair of saucer eyes and “Nope!”. He stopped talking, bless him.

In the middle of writing this blog I had the opportunity to practice a conversation with a child to help the child make more sense of their experience and their environment. I kept that phrase as the running framework for what I wanted to say, with care and intention. During this child’s break time this child had a fight with a “friend”. How could I help her see how her behaviour was aggravating the problem? How could I help to use more positive strategies to communicate with someone? How could I help her be more aware that righteous ideas of “getting back at someone” to cause them pain was unhealthy and wouldn’t help her in the long run?

These ideas sit comfortably with Wilson McCaskill’s theories of relationship building, building empathy and the language of strong and weak choices (through game playing). I’m especially interested in the language of “What is the little voice in your head saying? What is it telling you to do?”. I think this strategy of helping children to be in touch with their inner-voice helps them to act with more empathy. If they can be more in touch and understand their inner-voice then they can develop their ability to imagine what someone else’s inner voice would be saying, someone else’s internal experience, which is the basis for developing empathy.

So what are these ways of interacting with children doing? Enabling them to be more empathic, aware and humane in their relationships with other people and the world. The teachers job is to be intentional with language choices and to be aware of thing we say that may not be helpful in developing relationships and empathy. I even think that some things we say are “developing relationships” actually aren’t. If our goal is to develop empathy and the children’s ability to make good sense of the world then this needs to be the basis of our relationship building.

Thanks for being with me on this journey. Please comment and add to this conversation in your own way with your own thoughts!

c

“Children have rights as human beings and also need special care and protection.”  UNICEF

Something from the ever thought-provoking and child advocacy publication (although I see them as a community) Exchange Magazine (US). It’s 20 years since the creation and signing of the UN Convention of the Rights of the Child. Their daily email (which I highly recommend) was titled “Should we celebrate?”. One of the recent World Forum Global Leader facilitators Youseff Hajjar stated in his address “The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child is 20 Years Old: Should We Celebrate?” that although it is the only convention to be signed and ratified by all countries, two are missing, one is Somalia the other is the USA.

So the US hasn’t ratified this convention? Well, Kyoto was a toughie but the Rights of Children? Go here to lend your voice to the campaign for the USA to sign the Convention. The second Bush administration stated in 2001 that “The Convention on the Rights of the Child may be a positive tool for promoting child welfare for those countries that have adopted it. But we believe the text goes too far when it asserts entitlements based on economic, social and cultural rights. … The human rights-based approach … poses significant problems as used in this text.” 

During the Walden University Presidential Youth Debate (thanks Wikipedia) in the run-up to the last US elections, Barack Obama stated that it was “embarrasing” to be in the company of Somalia and that he would review the convention (as well as others). Let’s see if he follows through.

I spent some time with my second class exploring and discussing the UN Convention on the Rigths of the Child. I started out by simply putting it up on the wall. First, it was just another piece of writing on the wall, then the interest, then a few started looking a little closer, then one child started to question. After that, they referred to it constantly and it became a reference tool for discussion in our classroom. I highly recommend including the document in the culture of your classroom or learning community.