Share This With All Schools, Please (And Everybody Else, Too)

Chase Melton is a lucky child. Every Friday afternoon his teacher "asks her students to take out a piece of paper and write down the names of four children with whom they’d like to sit the following week. The children know that these requests may or may not be honored. She also asks the students to nominate one student whom they believe has been an exceptional classroom citizen that week. All ballots are privately submitted to her.

"And every single Friday afternoon, after the students go home, Chase’s teacher takes out those slips of paper, places them in front of her and studies them. She looks for patterns. Who is not getting requested by anyone else? Who doesn't even know who to request? Who never gets noticed enough to be nominated? Who had a million friends last week and none this week? You see, Chase’s teacher is not looking for a new seating chart or 'exceptional citizens.'

"Chase’s teacher is looking for lonely children. She’s looking for children who are struggling to connect with other children. She’s identifying the little ones who are falling through the cracks of the class’s social life. She is discovering whose gifts are going unnoticed by their peers. And she’s pinning down- right away- who’s being bullied and who is doing the bullying.

"It is like mining for gold – the gold being those little ones who need a little help – who need adults to step in and TEACH them how to make friends, how to ask others to play, how to join a group, or how to share their gifts with others. And it’s a bully deterrent because every teacher knows that bullying usually happens outside of her eyeshot – and that often kids being bullied are too intimidated to share. But as she said – the truth comes out on those safe, private, little sheets of paper.

"As Chase’s teacher explained this simple, ingenious idea – I stared at her with my mouth hanging open. 'How long have you been using this system?' I said.

"Ever since Columbine, she said. Every single Friday afternoon since Columbine."

Why does Chase's teacher do this? Because she realizes that all violence begins with disconnection.

Quoted material is excerpted from Glennon Doyle Melton's blog, Momastery.com. Please go read the rest there. It's important.