This Wednesday, I had the opportunity to volunteer at BJM Elementary School for the first time. I was very excited to work with kids and get to know them better!
More specifically, I got to work with kids in the Arts Classroom. I was playing with two boys who were eagerly assembling train tracks when conflict arose. One kid wanted to test the train tracks by placing a train on the tracks while the other kid did not. I tried to resolve the conflict by telling the small boy who wanted to test the train tracks to build a new set of train track on the side. Taking my advice, the small boy created a new set of train tracks, but with no spare train tracks left, he started taking tracks from the other kid. This caused one of the kids to become angry and violent. Before I could try and calm the little boy down, a teacher came over and asked the angry boy what’s wrong? The boy just sat there angrily and refused to speak. However, the teacher reminded the angry little boy that she could not help him if he did not want to explain the situation. Finally, the little boy cooled off and calmly explained the situation.
After seeing the little boy and how the teacher handled the situation, I realized that being passive aggressive is never the right answer to resolving a problem. In fact, being passive aggressive hinders progression of a conflict. Moving forward, I want to remember whenever a conflict arises, I want to respectfully confront my feelings.
This is a great vignette that states where adults are still playing out those railroad set conflicts. You are right to see how it relates to passive aggressive behavior which seems to be the maintenance of simply ‘not talking’ that we see. Probably the biggest question we might have as adults is trying to figure out how and why these outward expressions of anger that little kids have and that we can deal with, somehow transform into something that’s much more difficult to manage, that takes years of therapy sometimes to untangle. I do wish we could have a teacher tell adults, ‘you do need to talk about it’ and have that explanation and change of behavior solve things in adulthood.
I love how the teacher acted in this situation! Learning how to communicate is such an important skill in life, one that I struggle with too. There are many times during group projects where I find myself being passive aggressive. This is a nice reminder that doing so doesn’t help anyone.
Your report of how the teacher reacted to this conflict I feel is fairly representative of the educators at BJM, they all have a genuine love for education, and their drive to solve problems isn’t out of annoyance but rather a desire to teach life lessons.