Session Six Activity Two-Conflict Sources
Report
There are many types of conflicts that occur
during the normal day in education. Some types of conflicts are interpersonal,
others are academic, and some may be sociopolitical, while others are cultural.
The most commonly reported conflict in the interviews that I conducted was
interpersonal. Interpersonal issues occur whenever two or more people
have a conflict of interest of some sort. An example of such an issue
came up during my student interview of Maria Lopez. Maria said, “Yesterday,
__________ was asked to get his head off the desk. He refused.
Mrs. _____ repeated the demand and then walked over and asked again.
The guy said, ‘You are about to piss me off.’ The teacher apologized
and said that he had to follow the rules like everyone else and demanded
that he get to work. It was then that the student leaned back in his
chair. The teacher stated, ‘Now, get the paper out.’ The guy opened
the folder. She repeated it again and the student took out his sheet
face down. Mrs. ____________ then said, ‘You have two options, sit-up
and study your work or go to the office.’ The guy did nothing and she made
him go to the office.” In this example there was an obvious conflict
between the teacher and the student. Conflicts such as this are found
to be common amongst the students and teachers at the Fort Worth Can Academy.
Amazingly, there were no sociopolitical issues brought up during any of the
interviews.
There appear to be some types of conflict that do not
fit the four main areas of conflicts that were looked at for this exercise.
Some people have a conflict from within themselves, often called intrapersonal.
An intrapersonal conflict may be related to self-esteem or self-concept,
thoughts, or feelings about things that are kept inside. Upon interviewing
a peer, it was stated that students often would set up students to be the
butt of a joke or a prank. Being the butt of a joke or a prank would
make the person feel poorly about him or herself and this would be kept inside.
There are many situations where students have their self-esteem injured and
this type of situation can affect a person for years. Although the
initial cause of such a problem may start out as an interpersonal conflict,
it eventually becomes an intrapersonal conflict.
Cooperation appears to be used in some schools and not
in others. The peer that I interviewed had no examples of cooperation
that were used at her school, but the student I interviewed did. It
is alarming to see the wide array of usage of such an important aspect of
a school. Cooperation should be something that students learn from
those that teach them. The student that I interviewed gave two main
examples of cooperation from her school. She, the student that I interviewed,
believes the teachers are always cooperating with each other to share equipment.
The example she gave was when Mrs. H and Ms. C wanted to show a movie on
Anne Frank, both teachers worked together so that it was used for Holocaust
and for American Literature. She also told me that the counselors and
teachers work together to make sure the students keep their grades up.
The counselors’ work on the behavior and the teachers mainly work on the
grade issues, like daily work, participation, and tests. It is apparent
that cooperation occurs on differently levels within the educational system,
but this is something that needs to be improved.
The students have very little voice in their schools,
but it is hard to assess how much or how little input they have by looking
at one student interview. It is frequent that students don’t have much
of a say because they often want to change the rules. At one school,
the seniors have a meeting to help make decisions pertaining to a variety
of activities that the seniors might play a part in to improve the campus.
Unfortunately, there was not much more input to go by when it comes to the
level of student voice in schools. Schools need to consider forming
a system to place more value on student input. Questionnaires, surveys,
and student information groups are all ways to allow students to have a voice.
In all of my interviews there was no real accommodation
for diversity besides the formalized state ESL programs that were being implemented
and the special education programs. No after school activities were
present and there was a lack of any cultural diversity acknowledgement by
the schools. Schools that are predominately multi-cultural and are
diverse in many ways besides culturally need to consider the implications
of the lack of such events. One example that was expressed through
a teacher interview from the Fort Worth Can Academy River Oaks campus suggests
that there is in some form an understanding that volunteering in the local
community can and does impact the students. Not only does the volunteering
impact the students, but also volunteering creates a sense of community.
As schools grow more diverse the need to recognize the lack of activities
and programs to accommodate these students needs to become an increasing
focus.
Schools do have an emerging pattern of a focus on the
academic and not enough focus on the society as a whole. The whole
purpose of school is to meet the needs of the students and prepare them for
the outside world. It is apparent that schools are not ready to meet
the needs to the students because they are not dealing with the conflicts,
they are not teaching cooperation, and they are not teaching students how
to work in a diverse society by teaching acceptance of diversity. Now
is the time to change this pattern before it unfolds and is too late.
Fights and conflicts break out because social skills and tolerance of diversity
is not being taught from an early age. Racism, prejudice, and discrimination
are increasing as time continues and it appears to worsen the older the students
get.
Oddly enough, the teachers view and the students view
do not appear to be different from my interviews. My peer sees the
sex, drugs, and alcohol as the main problem while the student sees the attitudes
as the issue. The truth may be that all of this is related and that the root
has yet to be found. It is like a weed. A weed must be rooted
up or it will grow back and destroy the good crop it grew in. In the
same way, a student who is left to with a root will get involved in attitudes,
sex, drugs, and alcohol and will influence others to do the same. If
the problem is stopped and dealt with then hopefully such things will never
happen. Something must be done to get everyone to work together. Students,
peers, and teachers all see the problem as the same.
The peer and student that I interviewed had some similarities
and differences to the experiences that I had in school. My peer and
I both are similar to the students experiences in that kids often tried to
get away with not having to work, but today it appears to be a more rebellious
state. Students may be more up front about their lack of willingness
to work and they are not afraid of the consequences. The peer that
I interviewed agreed with me that we lived in constant fear of being punished.
Both my peer and the student also agree with me that there are cliques that
were formed years ago and those same cliques are still around. Cliques
today are in the form of gangs while they used to be the in-crowd and the
out-crowd. The same types of put downs are still around as were back
in the day of my peers experience and my own experience. It looks as
if the defiance and openness of these situations has just grown and are worse
today than they were before. Gangs have colors to distinguish them
from the rest, while in the past there were just groups that hung out that
separated the students.
It is hard to account for these differences. None
of the questions in the interviews really accounted for these changes, but
I believe that some of this is due to the continuous lack of parental involvement.
Schools have let the same problems continue for years and the problem has
grown and gotten worse. The problem is like yeast, one little yeast
multiplies and then there is a whole batch of it. Issues should not
be avoided. In the peer interview it was stated that the school did
not do anything to stop occurrences of interpersonal conflict, but only stopped
the physical conflicts that occurred. Why do we have to wait until
things get too bad and are blowing up in our faces before we confront the
issues? I honestly don’t know. My interviews were helpful, but
there are so many details that were missing and I am not sure who has the
answer.