Introduction
On September 4, 2013 I started my first official day of student teaching in a Kindergarten classroom at a public school in North Park. My master teacher and I welcomed 25 excited but nervous and scared Kindergarten students to our classroom. Of the 25 students, there were 13 girls and 12 boys. That first week, I took the time to get to know my students and I learned a lot about them. I learned that 11 of the 25 students were English Language Learners, most of the students had attended a preschool setting prior to coming to Kindergarten, and most of the students did not go to the same preschool so they did not know each other. Over the course of the first week of school, the class began to get to know each other and connect. I noticed friendships starting to form and I saw bonding amongst the students occurring. Some tattling and accidents occurred but I felt like that was to be expected since all of the students were still adjusting to the elementary school setting.
On the second week of school, I began to notice something else. One day while I was monitoring the students at recess, I observed a male student of mine physically kicking another male student who was laying down on the grass. Immediately, I ran over to these students and told the male student of mine to stop kicking the other male student. Then I asked him why he was kicking him. His response to me was that the other student kicked him first so he kicked him back. I told them both that kicking another person is not nice and not safe because kicking another person could really injure them. Then I told the students that if someone is bothering them they need to use their words to solve the problem. About ten minutes after this incident occurred, I witnessed two other male students of mine hitting each other. I immediately addressed it in a similar fashion. However these violent behaviors did not just end there. Back in the classroom, I witnessed students pushing in line, pushing other students, spitting on other students, and poking students on the rug during instruction. Almost every time a situation like this arose, the student being bothered would come tell me about it so I could address the situation. These situations kept arising. My master teacher even expressed concern to me because student to student conflict had not usually been this high in years past. Therefore I knew this was not normal and something needed to be done to fix this situation.
On the second week of school, I began to notice something else. One day while I was monitoring the students at recess, I observed a male student of mine physically kicking another male student who was laying down on the grass. Immediately, I ran over to these students and told the male student of mine to stop kicking the other male student. Then I asked him why he was kicking him. His response to me was that the other student kicked him first so he kicked him back. I told them both that kicking another person is not nice and not safe because kicking another person could really injure them. Then I told the students that if someone is bothering them they need to use their words to solve the problem. About ten minutes after this incident occurred, I witnessed two other male students of mine hitting each other. I immediately addressed it in a similar fashion. However these violent behaviors did not just end there. Back in the classroom, I witnessed students pushing in line, pushing other students, spitting on other students, and poking students on the rug during instruction. Almost every time a situation like this arose, the student being bothered would come tell me about it so I could address the situation. These situations kept arising. My master teacher even expressed concern to me because student to student conflict had not usually been this high in years past. Therefore I knew this was not normal and something needed to be done to fix this situation.
As a result, my master teacher and I started using the Behavior Chart and started turning the behavior chart cards of students being physically aggressive and purposely bothering other students. Every student started the day on the green card but every time a student misbehaved the student would get their card turned to another color card. After the green card was the blue card which meant warning, then the yellow card which meant short time out, then the orange card which meant long time out, then the pink card which meant referral to the guidance counselor, and lastly the red card which meant visit to the principals office and a call home. Several of the students began to get their card turned due to being physically aggressive and purposely bothering other students.
After a couple days of using the behavior card system, I noticed the violence amongst the students started to subside but problems amongst the students hadn't subsided. Several of my students started reporting to me other conflicts they were having with friends in the class. Students would come up to me to tattle about issues like: a friend who stole their pencil, a friend who was poking them, a friend who took their book, a friend who sat on their spot on the rug, a friend who wouldn't share a toy with them, a friend who said they didn't want to be their friend, a friend who called them a name, etc. At first, I addressed each of these tattles when they were brought to my attention but I noticed it began to be quite time consuming and take away from instruction time and helping students learn. I also realized I was not helping my students grow socially by solving their social problems for them. Since these conflicts were starting to interfere with the class's focus on academics and affecting students social-emotional relationships with friends, I decided I needed to focus on it closely and provide students with some direction on solving their social conflicts.
At the beginning of the third week of school, my master teacher and I decided to teach the class an alternative way to solve their problems. We wanted our students to stop going straight to the teacher or getting physically aggressive to solve their problems. Therefore, we introduced the class to the problem solving plan used school wide called, "The Problem Solving Plan". With this plan, if a student is bothering another student, the student being bothered is supposed to ask the other student to please stop bothering him or her. If this student continues to be bothered then the student being bothered is supposed to ask the student again to stop bothering him or her. If the student continues to bother the other student after this then the student being bothered can inform the teacher. In order to ensure that the students understood how to utilize this plan, my master teacher role played a situation in which "The Problem Solving Plan" could be used then discussed with the class other situations when "The Problem Solving Plan" could be used. My master teacher and I thought "The Problem Solving Plan " would be a good solution to get students to solve problems on their own with their words and reduce the amount of students tattling to us. Unfortuately, it didn't change much. Throughout the third and fourth week of school, we still witnessed students acting physically aggressive towards other students. We also continued to get reports from students about other students bothering them even after they asked them to stop twice and in turn we had to address each issue for them. Usually we would get the reports during instruction or while we were helping individual students so it continued to interfere with teaching and learning time. When a student was clearly bothering or hurting another student on purpose, we would turn the students behavior card. However, conflicts among students continued to occur and disrupt the flow of class.
On the fifth week of school, I decided to conduct a "Needs Assessment" for the class to see how much the conflicts were really interfering with class time. For this "Needs Assessment" I decided to keep a record of all the students whose card was turned on the behavior chart for bothering or hurting another student, all of the "tattles" reported to me/my master teacher, and the amount of times instruction was interrupted.
At the beginning of the third week of school, my master teacher and I decided to teach the class an alternative way to solve their problems. We wanted our students to stop going straight to the teacher or getting physically aggressive to solve their problems. Therefore, we introduced the class to the problem solving plan used school wide called, "The Problem Solving Plan". With this plan, if a student is bothering another student, the student being bothered is supposed to ask the other student to please stop bothering him or her. If this student continues to be bothered then the student being bothered is supposed to ask the student again to stop bothering him or her. If the student continues to bother the other student after this then the student being bothered can inform the teacher. In order to ensure that the students understood how to utilize this plan, my master teacher role played a situation in which "The Problem Solving Plan" could be used then discussed with the class other situations when "The Problem Solving Plan" could be used. My master teacher and I thought "The Problem Solving Plan " would be a good solution to get students to solve problems on their own with their words and reduce the amount of students tattling to us. Unfortuately, it didn't change much. Throughout the third and fourth week of school, we still witnessed students acting physically aggressive towards other students. We also continued to get reports from students about other students bothering them even after they asked them to stop twice and in turn we had to address each issue for them. Usually we would get the reports during instruction or while we were helping individual students so it continued to interfere with teaching and learning time. When a student was clearly bothering or hurting another student on purpose, we would turn the students behavior card. However, conflicts among students continued to occur and disrupt the flow of class.
On the fifth week of school, I decided to conduct a "Needs Assessment" for the class to see how much the conflicts were really interfering with class time. For this "Needs Assessment" I decided to keep a record of all the students whose card was turned on the behavior chart for bothering or hurting another student, all of the "tattles" reported to me/my master teacher, and the amount of times instruction was interrupted.
After analyzing this data, I came to some conclusions. I concluded that interruptions were happening way too frequently, turning the students cards on the behavior chart every time they were causing a problem/hurting a classmate was not stopping it from occurring, the "Problem Solving Plan" structure was not fully allowing the students to solve their problems on their own, and taking class time to listen to students tattles then addressing the problem for them was taking away valuable instruction time and stopping learning from happening. I decided I needed to find a better way to manage this so I could teach/ help my students learn without these interruptions. This lead me to an idea. My idea was to teach my students a proactive way to solve their problems with friends on their own so they could address the problems themselves and I could make adequate use of my teaching time. However, since most of my students were used to going to an adult to solve their problems at home and at school for them, I knew this was going to be an adjustment and would take some time and practice. But my students are taught new academic material everyday in school and I have witnessed students apply what they are taught to solve academic problems on their own so I had faith they could do the same with social problems. I figured if I could successfully teach them how to verbally solve their problems on their own, then I would have less interruptions and more time devoted to teaching and learning. I also felt by doing this students would be able to strengthen communication skills, listening skills, relationships with other students, and get students to respect one another. Ultimately, this idea brought me to my an action research question and subquestions.
Action research question:
What happens when kindergarteners are taught how to resolve conflicts independently?
Subquestions:
1.How will learning proactive problem solving strategies impact interpersonal relationships amongst students?
2.How will learning proactive problem solving strategies reduce violence amongst students?
3.How will focusing on independent problem solving impact students' social and emotional growth?
Action research question:
What happens when kindergarteners are taught how to resolve conflicts independently?
Subquestions:
1.How will learning proactive problem solving strategies impact interpersonal relationships amongst students?
2.How will learning proactive problem solving strategies reduce violence amongst students?
3.How will focusing on independent problem solving impact students' social and emotional growth?