Section I

Prepare the Ground & Lay the Foundation

We hope you, and your students, will enjoy planning and constructing your No-Fault Classroom throughout the school year. Your joint explorations and the structure you create together have the potential to support a learning environment that works for everyone. The time you take at the beginning to prepare the ground for the foundation of your structure will be time well spent.

Power is of two kinds. One is obtained by fear of punishment, and the other by acts of love. Power based on love is a thousand times more effective and permanent than the one derived from fear of punishment.

— Mahatma Gandhi

To prepare the ground and lay a firm foundation for your No-Fault Classroom, we strongly encourage you to take time, before starting the modules, to do the following:

[] Examine your current beliefs about conflict.

[] Look at your classroom management style and its underlying assumptions about how you use power.

[] Create your Vision for your classroom.

[] Share your Vision with your students and hear their Visions.

[] Co-create Classroom Group Agreements with your students.

Prepare the Ground for Your No-Fault Classroom

To begin, we invite you to examine some of your present thinking about power, conflict and classroom management to see what assumptions and understandings you are taking into this exploration with your students.

Reflection on Conflict

Please use the guidelines below during some relaxed time to think about what conflict means to you; the causes of conflict and its effects on learning; and your current thoughts about how to prevent, reduce and resolve conflict.

After you reflect on these questions, we will share with you our own responses to the same questions.

Punishment damages goodwill and self-esteem, and shifts our attention from the intrinsic value of an action to external consequences.

— Marshall B. Rosenberg

Teacher Exploration:

Your Understanding of Conflict, Its Causes, Its Effects & What Prevents, Reduces and Resolves It

What is conflict?

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What are the causes of conflict?

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How does conflict affect classroom learning?

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What prevents, reduces and resolves conflict?

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Our Understanding of Conflict, Its Causes, Its Effects & What Prevents, Reduces and Resolves It

What is conflict?

We begin with Webster's dictionary definition of conflict: "competitive or opposing action resulting from [a perception of] opposing needs, drives or wishes."

The con- in conflict is equivalent to com-, which means together; the root, fligare, means "to strike." In short, conflict is "striking together," as in a fight, battle or war.

Simple situations can be either relatively minor problems to be solved or the start of a fight. Trish hits Alfredo. Yukiko grabs Ryan's pencil and won't give it back. Jenny didn't turn in her homework for the third time this week. What determines, in each of these cases, whether an argument or fight will ensue?

From a behavioral point of view, if any of the players in the above interchanges uses criticism, blame or name-calling, the scales tip in favor of conflict. Each exchange of blaming actions and words contributes to flaring tempers and moves Trish and Alfredo, Yukiko and Ryan, and Jenny and the teacher closer to the battle zone.

In conflict situations, name-calling, hitting, criticism and blame are often all that teachers and administrators see and hear before assigning blame themselves and handing out punishments. Conflict, however, is a more complex dynamic with much deeper roots. Those who are willing to ask why students call each other names, hit each other, and criticize and blame one another can discover the true nature of conflict and be primed to find new, creative ways to get to the roots of it and work with it rather than manage or suppress it.

What are the causes of conflict?

Again, taking off from Webster's definition: conflict is "competitive or opposing action resulting from [the perception of] opposing needs, drives or wishes."

If we're in a situation where we think that our needs, drives or wishes won't be considered or can't be met, we perceive danger and feel afraid. This is an automatic response. We're not in control of it. Our whole physiology shifts to protecting ourselves. Stress hormones are released that shut down the reasoning zones of the brain. Simplified, binary, either/or, black-and-white thinking takes over: I'm right, you're wrong. You're to blame. In short order, "you" become "the enemy."

Fight, Flight, Freeze

When we are in danger, perceived or actual, we respond automatically with a fight, flight or freeze reaction: we lash out (hit, scream, blame others) OR try to escape the situation (lie, blame ourselves, run away), OR freeze in our tracks (cower, cry, shake). Any of these reactions is likely to set off a chain reaction of judgmental, punitive responses from those around us, who are often equally stressed. The situation escalates and the understanding and reasoned response that can lead to resolution is deferred.

When conflict is dealt with in our habitual ways — by finding out who is to blame and punishing that person — fear and resentment are left smoldering, and conflict will soon flare up again.

As we see it, the root of this conflict, and all conflict, is the thought or perception that my needs aren't going to get met in this situation. The fear generated by this thought triggers a protective, defensive reaction that sets the conflict in motion and keeps it fueled.

How does conflict affect classroom learning?

Emotional safety is a fundamental requirement for learning. Under the emotional stress of conflict, the learning zones of the brain shut down. It is not possible, in the midst of a stressful, fearful thought, to focus one's attention on tasks that require reason, concentration, creativity or timetables for completion.

What prevents, reduces and resolves...