DEALING WITH STUDENT CONFLICT IN THE CLASSROOM

Catherine M. Gaza

A classroom contains multi-intelligent students with an array of personalities and ways of thinking and decision. It is an everyday scenario to see students who either disrupt classes or worse create dispute in the class. When students don’t get along, it diminishes the potential for success in the classroom. When this happens, teachers must spend valuable classroom time dealing with those in conflict.

This affects the contact hours for classroom discussion and interaction. Depending on the severity of the conflict, teachers spend real time in resolving the conflict. This is not always a simple task. It is important to understand that during any conflict, two major concerns come into play. It is achieving our goals of resolving the conflict and maintaining an appropriate relationship with the other person.

It is just imperative to say that teachers should always know how to deal with students conflicts in the classroom. This is where classroom management and conflict resolution take the center stage. It is very essential to learn ways and means to manage the clash of personalities and ideas at the classroom and know how to manage your teaching ability easier.

W hen resolving and managing conflict in the classroom, it is certain to know that the very first thing to do is to listen. Listening to both sides of the conflicting parties may open the opportunities to let go of grudges and even of complains against each other. This is not an easy solution because you have to weigh between the affected parties and for the sake of other students. You cannot come up with the right decision without understanding the problem first.

Then, open the communication lines among conflicted parties. Proper communication is the key in resolving conflicts. Every student has the right to air out his or her opinion and deserves to talk about their feelings openly and honestly, but it must be done with equal respect for each student’s opinion. There is nothing wrong in expressing one’s feeling, but it must be done calmly and in the right manner. After this, take a break to lessen the pressure.

Finally, the best part of resolving student conflicts is to come up with the most suited and best solution after hearing both sides of the story. Acknowledge both shortcomings and make them realize that they should still treat each other as brothers and sisters inside the classroom.

Teachers’ effectiveness in resolving student conflict is at stake when dealing with such classroom dilemmas. As a professional, we must be ready in every situation that happens in inside the classroom and being a mediator in a classroom conflict is one of them.

The author is Teacher

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III at Betis National High School