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1. Recklessness:

Sometimes, what might seem like courage can turn into recklessness when individuals act without considering the potential consequences or risks involved. This lack of thoughtful consideration can lead to negative outcomes.

2. Misguided Beliefs:

Courage can go awry when it is based on misguided beliefs or distorted values. Acting boldly for a cause that is ethically or morally questionable may lead to negative consequences.

3. Aggression:

Courage, when expressed as aggression or a confrontational attitude, can become harmful. Assertiveness is positive, but when it crosses the line into aggression, it can damage relationships and escalate conflicts.

4. Stubbornness:

Stubbornness or an unwillingness to listen to reason can sometimes be misconstrued as courage. In reality, persisting in a course of action without considering new information or alternative viewpoints may lead to negative outcomes.

5. Lack of Empathy:

Courage that lacks empathy can result in actions that harm others. True courage should be tempered with an understanding of how one's actions may impact those around them.

6. Impulsivity:

Acting on impulse without careful thought can turn courageous intentions into hasty and potentially damaging actions.

7. Resistance to Change:

Courage can be misapplied when it is used to resist necessary changes or advancements. Refusing to adapt to new circumstances or ideas, even when they are beneficial, can lead to negative consequences.

8. Ignoring Consequences:

When courage involves ignoring foreseeable negative consequences, it can have detrimental effects. Failing to weigh the risks and potential harm can result in adverse outcomes.

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Who is courageous? Is it Caitlyn Jenner, the former athlete and reality TV star, for going public with her decision to transition from male to female-or an American soldier who gave life or limb in Iraq?

"As I see post after post about Bruce Jenner's transition to a woman," said Oregon resident Terry Coffey on social media, "and I hear words like, bravery, heroism, and courage, just thought I'd remind all of us what real American courage, heroism, and bravery looks like!" A picture of toy soldiers accompanied the post, which went viral and was shared almost a million times.

What about terrorists like Charleston shooter Dylann Roof, Boston marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, or the men who flew planes into the World Trade Center?

Less than a week after the September 11th attacks, comedian Bill Maher disagreed with the President's characterization of the terrorists as cowardly. "We have been the cowards, lobbing cruise missiles from 2,000 miles away. That's cowardly," said Maher. "Staying in the airplane when it hits the building, say what you want about it, it's not cowardly." His commentary led to the cancellation of his late-night talk show on ABC.

Clemson University psychologist Cynthia Pury isn't surprised by these controversies, for they reveal the ways that courage is very much in the eye of the beholder.

"Courage happens when someone perceives a valuable, meaningful goal in their environment," she told me at the World Congress on Positive Psychology in June. "But in order to reach that goal, they have to take a personal risk, and they make a voluntary choice to do so."

In fact, focusing on the goal is what allows us to appear courageous, especially in a split-second emergency. "A lot of time people are just so distracted by the goal that they don't have time to be afraid," she said.

The trouble arises from the fact that not everyone shares the same goals. Thus we tend to see courage as a limited resource, competitively allocated to elevate certain goals and downgrade others. Pury's research has zeroed in on the nature of different kinds of courage and what we can do to cultivate them-work that gives her special insight on many contemporary debates.

Who gets to be courageous?

Pury's research has found that courage is more likely to emerge when a person sees a meaningful goal and then believes they have the ability to achieve that goal, a product of cognitive appraisal she calls "process courage."

A man is more likely to run into a burning building to save kittens if he has the training and equipment to do so. A man who runs into the building without those things might be seen as courageous-but not, perhaps, very smart. A third man who has the training and equipment but doesn't see saving kittens as a worthy goal would simply stand on the sidelines. So whether to take action depends on a person's goals, as well as evaluations of personal risk and his own ability to achieve the goal.

But how will observers view that private decision? Here's where things get interesting-and debatable.

Much, argued Pury, depends on whether other people share the goal in question. For many in the community of people who have transitioned from one sex to the other, Jenner is a hero: an accomplished male athlete who was willing to embrace a new celebrity identity as a woman. In this view, it took personal courage to go public with a very intimate decision-and by doing so, pave the way for others with less social power and wealth to follow the same path. She had the resources to create an image for others to pursue.

The conservative reaction was very different. To many conservatives, Jenner's goal-to raise the visibility of transgendered people-is socially destructive.

To a degree, it's a problem of empathy and group affiliation. "If it's your lived life, you know that that transition is really important and you value that goal because you've pursued it yourself," said Pury. You would also know firsthand all the barriers and hostility that Jenner would face. Knowing something about her struggle might make her courageous in your eyes.

But to conservatives, all of that pales in comparison to the goal of maintaining rigid barriers between men and women, a dichotomy on which they say the American family depends. In the pages of the National Review, Doug French framed courage as resistance to the trend Jenner represents.

"By refusing to speak, we contribute to the notion that even conservatives understand that something is wrong-something is shameful-about our own deepest beliefs," he writes. French (an Iraq veteran) is not willing to attribute courage to Jenner, instead granting it to members of his own self-defined group, people who share his values, experiences, and goals.

Courage isn't universal, it seems. Far from it. But are some kinds of courage better than others?

Can courage go bad?

Pury's research suggests that courage is something we grant to validate certain goals and withhold to invalidate others. While it might seem as though Jenner and an American soldier could both be courageous, in fact we appear to feel a strong impulse to treat courage like a finite resource that goes to some people but not others. Just as we sometimes withhold empathy or compassion from out-groups, so we will refuse to grant that people can be courageous if we don't approve of their goals or values.

But don't the actions of terrorists like Roof or Tsarnaev meet the technical definition of courage, of pursuing goals at great personal risk to themselves? Both young men are now sitting in jail, and Tsarnaev is on his way to the death chamber.

Pury argued that there is such a thing as "bad courage," which she defines as bravery in pursuit of goals that result in the destruction of oneself or of other people. Courage, she said, contains three basic elements: noble goal, personal risk, and choice. Bad courage has a goal, but it's not a noble one. "Like when someone's goal is to kill a lot of people or to start a race war," she said. "Or when someone's goal is, quite frankly, to kill themselves."

With her colleague Charles Starkey, Pury has analyzed narratives of people who have demonstrated anti-social, or bad, courage, such as suicide notes or the manifestos of mass killers. "They may not call it courageous," she said. "They very commonly talk about the goal and how important the goal is to them. They talk about the risk or fear that they'll experience." In these narratives, people will say, "I feel that I am the only one who can do this."

Here is a quote from Dylann Roof's manifesto, posted shortly before he murdered nine people in a Charleston church:

I chose Charleston because it is most historic city in my state, and at one time had the highest ratio of blacks to Whites in the country. We have no skinheads, no real KKK, no one doing anything but talking on the internet. Well someone has to have the bravery to take it to the real world, and I guess that has to be me.

Pury said she conceived of "bad courage" when watching coverage of the Virginia Tech shooter, who in 2007 killed 32 people. "I die, like Jesus Christ, to inspire generations of the Weak and Defenseless people," writes Seung-Hui Cho in his manifesto. "Like Moses, I spread the sea and lead my people-the Weak, the Defenseless, and the Innocent Children of all ages." Pury said that he's referring to "people who are picked on like he was picked on." Cho, like Roof, was an army of one, fighting for a country that existed only in his imagination. It was a battle he lost, and few outside his family mourn his death.

But does that mean he had no courage? It is difficult to get away from social context and even personal revulsion when allocating courage. Pury uses the example of same-sex marriage to show how culture and shared goals define courage. To opponents, the county clerks who quit their jobs rather than certify same-sex marriages are true heroes; to them, people who fought for the rights of gay and lesbian couples to marry are examples of, at best, bad courage. To everyone else, those county clerks appear to fighting for a very bad goal-the systematic exclusion of one class of people from a bedrock social institution.

Pury acknowledges that it's difficult to attribute courage with any objectivity. Indeed, it may be impossible.

Finding everyday courage

Most research into courage looks at extraordinary and extreme situations. But Pury's insights might be even more true in daily life.

Within the most traditional marriages, people are sometimes confronted with choices that are about good goals versus bad goals-but the difference between them is often murky. If you fall in love with someone who is not your spouse, for example, does courage consist of following your heart or sticking with your commitment?

"People differ in that," said Pury. "If you could run an experiment, and do that same thing over and over again, and have them make the same choice over and over again, I'm guessing that it would be situationally dependent on other stuff. It wouldn't be the same for the same person in the same relationship even all the time."

To a degree, Pury's research raises more questions than it answers, some of them more philosophical or existential than psychological. But one of Pury's messages is that people are often more courageous than they think they are. When people call themselves cowardly-often about facing the challenges of day-to-day life-Pury finds that they are often struggling under huge emotional burdens.

"As a clinician, my experience has been that those people are talking about how they have post-traumatic stress disorder." They might have suffered violence or sexual abuse in childhood, leaving wounds that are invisible to others but that "prevent them from engaging with the world as fully as they might otherwise." In fact, "you could also see those folks as having a tremendous amount of personal courage."

What about people facing a serious illness? During my conversation with Pury, Kathryn Britton of Positive Psychology News Daily pointed out that there are some, especially Europeans, who find it strange that Americans will tend to call people courageous as they go through treatment for a terminal disease. In this case, that element of "choice" is missing, one of the three characteristics of courage.

But Pury replied that we do have choices about how to respond to circumstances we can't control. She points to a qualitative study of cancer patients who were able to turn the focus off themselves and were still able to do "pro-social things." In other words, they were still able to help others or make things easier for other people even as their bodies gave out-to be selfless as they suffered. There may be heroism in how they approach death, for that's something we must all do eventually.

When we attribute courage to a cancer patient, said Pury, "maybe what we are really saying is 'Thank you for going through cancer in a way that doesn't scare the s*** out of everyone else.'" The patient becomes a model to others for facing the inevitable.

In the end, we might be better off deliberately seeking the courage in the people around us, instead of trying to take it away from them. Our spouses, children, parents, grandparents, friends-and perhaps even some of our enemies-might turn out to be braver than we thought.

Greater Good wants to know: Do you think this article will influence your opinions or behavior?

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Who gets to be brave? Researcher Cynthia Pury argues that courage is very much in the eye of the beholder.

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1.Speak of their brave as though they’re already there

2.Give permission for imperfection

3.You won’t always feel ready. That’s why it’s brave

4.Try something new

5.Be the example

6.Give them space for courage of thought

7.And when the motive is brave but the behaviour is, let’s say, ‘unadorable’

8.Give space for their intuition to flourish – and teach them how to use it

9.And then there’s self-talk. Sneaky, sidelining self-talk

10.It’s never too late to change … anything

11.The outcome doesn’t matter as much as the process

12.Encourage their sense of adventure

13.Let them celebrate their courage regularly

14.Brave is about doing what’s right for them

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Building Courage in Kids - How to Teach Kids to Be Brave - Hey Sigmund

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Building Courage in Kids , there are many things that lead to success and happiness, but one of the most powerful of these is courage. Visit our page.

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Everyday courage is maintaining a positive attitude in daily life, even when facing the unknown, illness, or adversity, and not giving up on life. Examples include moving to a new city to start anew, learning to live with an illness, and continuing to go to work every day despite challenges in the workplace.

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Psychological courage is overcoming personal fears and anxieties to showcase one's true self or achieve personal growth. Examples include turning oneself in to the police, openly admitting one's pain to those around them, and coming out.

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Moral courage involves selfless actions taken to uphold certain values. This may include enduring hardship for what you believe is right, sacrificing for lofty ideals, or standing up to protect values or pursue the common good. Concrete examples include preventing bullying and openly supporting same-sex marriage.

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Physical courage refers to the bravery exhibited when putting oneself in potentially harmful situations to achieve a noble goal. Examples include diving into water to save someone, rushing into traffic to prevent someone from being hit, and persevering in the fight against illness, refusing to give up on one's own life.

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Facing the departure of a beloved dog, the emotions are difficult to accept.

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Facing the departure of a beloved dog, the emotions are difficult to accept.

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Facing the departure of a beloved dog, the emotions are difficult to accept. The author mentioned that he couldn't write poetry to express his feelings for the dog. However, unconsciously, he ended up writing a book about that dog.

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Knowing that you were once someone's entire world is enough.

In the first two episodes, Woody kept telling Buzz that the responsibility of a "toy" is to accompany children in play and growth. Even though knowing that Andy treasures him, Woody would rather be donated to embrace the next encounter than be left in the attic without purpose.

However, the pain of growing from deep love to letting go is not something everyone can bear all at once. In the end, it was Andy's proud yet hesitant gaze as he introduced each toy to Bonnie that revealed not only his affection for the toys but also a nostalgic longing for the simple joy of being happy all day with toys. Now, those times have become memories, and he must learn the final lesson from the toys: to let go of attachment and reluctance, becoming an adult who can confidently stride into the future.

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Mental health issues, personality disorders, or a history of trauma can contribute to violent behavior in some individuals. Mental health conditions may impair judgment, impulse control, and emotional regulation

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Teach students how to make genuine friends 

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Teach students how to make genuine friends 

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Overconfident Participation: I was a student who consistently dominates class discussions with an overly assertive and opinionated approach. I spoke out without fully understanding the topic or without considering the perspectives of others. Excessive bravery in expressing opinions might discourage quieter students from contributing, create an unbalanced learning environment, and potentially lead to misunderstandings or misinterpretations of course material.

In this case, if not tempered with a willingness to listen and learn from others, can have a detrimental effect on the overall dynamics of the classroom, hindering collaborative learning and stifling the diversity of voices in discussions. It's a reminder that effective communication and learning also involve humility, empathy, and a balanced approach to expressing one's views in a group setting.

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How Teachers Can Help Students Who Are Homeless

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How Teachers Can Help Students Who Are Homeless

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1. Stabilize the child’s basic needs

2. Administer a brief educational assessment to the child to determine their level of academic ability

3. Find time each week for new students to “check-in” with their teacher

4. Pair a new student with a “buddy” in the classroom on the first day of school

5. Provide structure and adhere to a consistent daily routine and clear, concise rules

6. Facilitate successful experiences for new students

7. Plan assignments so children can keep up without having to take work home

8. If tutoring is required, be proactive in obtaining it through school or community programs

9.If counseling is necessary, refer the child to the school counselor or outside community agency

10. Reach out to parents

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Feeling nervous on the first day of school is mainly due to encountering a series of new and unknown situations, which can trigger feelings of insecurity and anxiety. 

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Feeling nervous on the first day of school is mainly due to encountering a series of new and unknown situations, which can trigger feelings of insecurity and anxiety. 

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New environment, new interpersonal relationships, unfamiliar courses and teaching styles, social pressure, and expectation stress are what triggers students being anxious

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What could teacher encourage parents to deal with students feeling first day to school anxious?

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What could teacher encourage parents to deal with students feeling first day to school anxious?

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1.Talk about feelings

2.Go over the class list

3.Run through the day to school before semester starts

4.Practice first-day conversations

5.Talk about the teacher

6.Talk about school support

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Summertime offers a much-needed break from the demands and stresses of school. But sometimes when kids head back to school, they feel anxious and nervous. This year may be especially stressful if kids are returning to in-person school after learning at home for so long.

While you might not be able to snuff out all of your grade-schooler's concerns, you can help calm those normal first-day jitters. Here are some key ways.

1. Talk about feelings.

Young kids don't always have the exact words to express their complex emotions. And kids who struggle in school often have a more difficult time reaching out when they feel grumpy or upset. Instead of a clear-cut conversation, kids might express their feelings by acting out or being crankier.

2. Go over the class list.

Schools don't always like to give out class lists before the first day. But you can always ask. Check to see if your child knows any of the other kids in the class. This can provide a feeling of stability. If there are kids you know your child has had a hard time with, you can brainstorm ways of dealing with them. You can also remind your child that all people grow and change. Maybe kids who were hard to cope with in the past will have new skills this year.

3. Run through the day.

Go over the morning drill. What time will your child need to get up? When will you leave the house? Where and when does the bus arrive? Do the same with the afternoon schedule. How will your child get home? When will homework be done? Factor in afterschool activities, too.

See if you can visit the school before the new year begins. Your child can get comfortable with the layout of the building and classroom ahead of time.

4. Practice first-day conversations.

Discuss and even rehearse common interactions that you know your child will have with other kids and teachers. Practice introductions: "Hi. I heard you were in my class. How was your summer?" and "Hi. I'm Annie. Art is my favorite class. Do you think we'll get to do pottery this year?" Practice how to greet a familiar face, too: "It's great to see you! I think we're in the same class. I'm glad."

5. Talk about the teacher.

6. Talk about school support.

If your child has an IEP, a 504 plan, or informal classroom supports, explain how these work. For instance: "You'll have a little more time to complete the writing assignments, and you can do them in a quiet room." Or "A teacher might take you out in the hall to work on math sometimes."

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6 tips for calming first-day jitters in grade school

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Is your child nervous about the first day of school? Use these tips to help calm first-day jitters in grade school.

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How Teachers Can Ease Students' First Day Jitters

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How Teachers Can Ease Students' First Day Jitters

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1.Introduce a Buddy

2.Give the Child Responsibility

3.Share Your Own Story

4.Give a Classroom Tour

5.Set Expectations with Parents

6.Address the Whole Class

7.Read a Book About First Day Jitters

8.Compliment the Student

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As elementary school teachers, we can sometimes find ourselves easing our young students through times of transition. For some children, the first day of school brings anxiety and an intense desire to cling to parents. This is known as First Day Jitters, and it's a natural occurrence that we may even have experienced ourselves when we were children.

Beyond whole class Ice Breaker activities, it's important to be aware of the following simple strategies that teachers can employ to help young students feel comfortable in their new classrooms and ready to learn in school all year long.

Introduce a Buddy

Sometimes one friendly face is all it takes to help a child transition from tears to smiles. Find a more outgoing, confident student to introduce to the nervous child as a buddy who will help him or her learn about the new surroundings and routines.

Partnering up with a peer is a practical shortcut to helping a child feel more at home in a new classroom. The buddies should stay connected during recess and lunch for at least the first week of school. After that, make sure the student is meeting lots of new people and making several new friends at school.

Give the Child Responsibility

Help the anxious child feel useful and part of the group by giving him or her a simple responsibility to help you out. It could be something as simple as erasing the whiteboard or counting out colored construction paper.

Children often crave acceptance and attention from their new teacher; so by showing them you rely on them for a certain task, you are instilling confidence and purpose during a critical time. Plus, staying busy will help the child focus on something concrete outside of his or her own feelings at that moment.

Share Your Own Story

Nervous students can make themselves feel even worse by imagining that they are the only ones who feel so worried about the first day of school. Consider sharing your own first day of school story with the child in order to reassure him or her that such feelings are common, natural, and surmountable.

Personal stories make teachers appear more human and approachable to children. Make sure you mention specific strategies you used to overcome your feelings of anxiety and suggest the child try the same techniques.

Give a Classroom Tour

Help the child feel more comfortable in his or her new surroundings by offering a short guided tour of the classroom. Sometimes, just seeing his or her desk can go a long way toward easing uncertainty. Focus on all of the fun activities that will happen around the classroom that day and all year long.

If possible, ask the child's advice for a certain detail, such as where best to place a potted plant or what color construction paper to use on a display. Helping the child feel connected to the classroom will help him or she visualizes life in the new space.

Set Expectations with Parents

Often, parents exacerbate nervous children by hovering, fretting, and refusing to leave the classroom. Children pick up on parental ambivalence and perhaps will be just fine once they're left on their own with their classmates.

Don't indulge these "helicopter" parents and allow them to stay past the school bell. Politely (but firmly) tell the parents as a group, "Ok, parents. We're going to get our school day started now. See you at 2:15 for pickup! Thank you!" You are the leader of your classroom and it's best to take the lead, setting healthy boundaries and productive routines that will last all year long.

Address the Whole Class

Once the school day gets started, address the whole class about how we're all feeling jittery today. Assure the students that these feelings are normal and will fade with time. Say something along the lines of, "I'm nervous, too, and I'm the teacher! I get nervous every year on the first day!" By addressing the whole class as a group, the anxious student won't feel singled out.

Read a Book About First Day Jitters:

Find a children's book that covers the topic of first-day anxiety. A popular one is called First Day Jitters. Or, consider Mr. Ouchy's First Day which is about a teacher with a bad case of back to school nerves. Literature provides insight and comfort for a wide variety of situations, and first-day jitters are no exception. So work it to your advantage by using the book as a springboard for discussing the issue and how to deal with it effectively

Compliment the Student

At the end of the first day, reinforce positive behavior by telling the student that you noticed how well he or she did that day. Be specific and sincere, but not overly indulgent. Try something like, "I noticed how you played with the other kids at recess today. I'm so proud of you! Tomorrow's going to be great!"

You might also try complimenting the student in front of his or her parents at pickup time. Be careful not to give this special attention for a long while; after the first week or so of school, it's important for the child to start feeling confident on his or her own, not dependent upon teacher praise.

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How Can Teachers Ease First Day Jitters?

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Tips for how teachers can help anxious young students deal with their first day of school jitters.

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The Importance of Learning Students’ Names(Name Cards)

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The Importance of Learning Students’ Names(Name Cards)

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1. Facilitating Social Connections

2. Building a Positive Learning Environment

3. Assisting Teachers remembering students' name

4. Encouraging Participation

5. Reducing Anxiety for shy or introverted students

6. Group Work and Collaboration

7. Orientation in Large Classes

8. Promoting Inclusivity

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In the first grade of elementary school, I was a quiet and cry-prone child. Since kindergarten, teachers speculated whether I had autism due to my reserved nature, little did they know I was just afraid of talking to strangers. One day during an English class, the foreign teacher asked me for my name. Being the only one in the class who understood English, I confidently replied, "Pepe." The teacher then proceeded to ask the person behind me, and they also answered, "Pepe." However, her nametag said "Jenny." From that day on, we became the best of friends, and we still are to this day.

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How can teacher help students undergo breakup

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How can teacher help students undergo breakup

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1. Let them grieve

2. Listen

3. Provide encouragement

4. Offer support

5. Professional help

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Health & Safety
CollegiateParent
A romantic breakup can be challenging for anyone, especially our teens and young adult children who may be experiencing this for the first time. As a parent, it can crush our hearts to see our children suffer emotional heartbreak. It can be especially important to strike the right tone as you talk to them about it.

Here are some ways you can help your student through a breakup:

As parents, we are outsiders. We may not know how serious the relationship had become. When we truly acknowledge the gravity of the situation, we can help our children's healing process.

In her 20 years helping college students, LaTrina Rogers, aka The Dorm Mom , has seen time and time again that assisting students navigate breakups includes understanding that it is "a loss they have to grieve" and that there simply is no way around this process.

Allowing your child to experience all the feelings and not just dismissing the relationship or simply focusing on the negatives of the other person will give them the opportunity to move through the process of grieving the end of their relationship.

And no matter how much you may have loved your significant other, this is not your breakup and this is not about you. Share any feelings you have about the dissolution of the relationship with a trusted friend or confidant, not with your child.

Often as parents, it is in our nature to give unsolicited advice. After a breakup, your child needs a safe space to express feelings without you jumping in.

Use empathetic listening and similar strategies like giving them your undivided attention. Keep your phones off and away, and defer your judgment to allow your student to really feel heard.

It is natural to want to fix their problem, but do your best to first validate their feelings with active listening . Listen first, don't blame. When your child is receptive, you can start to provide some perspective.

3. Provide encouragement

Gently and lovingly remind your student that they will get through this. The old saying "One day at a time" can be very helpful if your student feels particularly overwhelmed and unmotivated.

Parental assurance that the pain will eventually subside can go a long way in reassuring your child. When asked, helpful advice can also be a source of comfort.

If you draw on personal experiences or those of close friends and family, it can offer real-world examples of people who have suffered through a tough breakup, and come out the other side.

If you are able to physically be there to support your child through this difficult time, that can often be a very big comfort. A hug, a walk around the campus, a Starbucks run, anything you can do together can be a way to stave off post-breakup blues.

If you are unable to be with them, use FaceTime to connect or a Zoom call to help foster the closeness they need to feel less alone. Encouraging self-care can also make a difference in how your child copes.

Even something as simple as a shower can change the way your student feels. Encourage them to eat healthy, exercise, get enough sleep and continue to stay busy with activities they enjoy.

It may be that despite your best efforts, your student is still feeling run down and depressed. This can impact their studies and health in real and challenging ways. If your child is struggling to cope with the breakup after a few weeks, encourage them to reach out to campus support.

That may be a resident assistant or a mental health counselor at student health services. It can also mean reaching out to professors and letting them know about personal circumstances that may be interfering with their class assignments.

Everyone experiences a breakup differently, and there is no one-size-fits-all approach. Dr. Marla Jorgensen, psychology professor and mother of four, summarized it like this when it comes to best advice to parents helping their teen/adult children through a break up: "Be Present. Show them how loved they are and make them feel it".

Good advice for all of us.

Join Our College Parent Newsletter!

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5 Ways to Help Your Student Through a Break Up

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When your student has a romantic relationship that comes to an end, it's time for empathy, not necessarily solutions

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During high school, I went through a breakup that left me in extreme pain. At that time, I was living in the school dormitory, and there was a fairly strict time management system, making it even more challenging for me to alleviate the turmoil in my heart.

A breakup is a significant challenge for anyone, and I was no exception. During that period, I felt a tremendous emotional impact, and the whole world seemed to become dark and gloomy. Under the pressure of academic responsibilities, coupled with the emotional breakdown, I felt trapped in a situation from which I couldn't escape.

The dormitory environment added extra pressure to my struggles. The strict time management system prevented me from freely addressing my emotions. Sometimes, I longed for a quiet place to reflect and release my emotions, but I was constrained by the dormitory regulations. This made me feel even more lonely and helpless.

Nevertheless, this experience became a crucial part of my growth. It taught me how to face setbacks and losses and find my inner strength in adversity. Although the painful experience made me feel helpless at the time, it also contributed to making me stronger and more mature.

In the end, I emerged from that period of darkness and found a new direction in life. Despite feeling that the pain was unbearable at the time, I learned valuable lessons that shaped the person I am today. I am still sincerely grateful for school counseling center, I hope I can provide my students with this assistance.

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Ways to Help Children Navigate Friendship Challenges

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Ways to Help Children Navigate Friendship Challenges

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1.Encourage Open Communication

2.Teach Conflict Resolution Skills

3.Promote Empathy and Perspective-Taking

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"Morgan isn't my friend anymore." "What if the kids laugh at my hair again like they did yesterday?" "Christopher said I'm weird."
For parents, it's heartbreaking to hear statements like these from our children. We would all like to rush in and defend them from every hurt and rejection. Instead, we can help them manage difficult feelings , cope with the complexities of relationships, and grow from these experiences.

Here are some helpful tips for guiding your child through common friendship challenges like bossiness, exclusion, and disagreements. In the process, your child will learn valuable lifelong skills that include empathy , assertiveness , and conflict resolution.

Before you continue, we thought you might like to download our FREE Affirmation Bracelets. It's important for children to be surrounded by loving and encouraging messages. These affirmation bracelets will boost your child's confidence and help them feel like they can do anything.

First, Teach What it Means to Be a Good Friend

Teach children values they should look for in others and strive to embody in their own relationships.

1. With good friends, they can be themselves. True friends will embrace them for who they really are, will be honest, and won't pressure them to do anything that makes them uncomfortable. In healthy friendships, children support friendships with other peers and celebrate one another's successes.

2. Good friends greet each other, take turns, say please and thank you, etc. Remember to model the behaviors and social skills you would like to see. It is also helpful to teach these skills in context. As your children play together (or, for an only child, as your child plays with a friend you've invited over), observe your child's interactions. When needed, step in to remind your child of polite and respectful behavior.

3. Good friends have empathy. Children need to understand that others may think and feel differently than they do, and that's OK. Perspective-taking is a new skill for young children, and it's one that you can help your child develop. Simple ways to practice empathy include pointing out the emotions of others (e.g., "See his face? He's sad because he was hoping to have a turn with the blocks"), discussing the emotions of characters in stories, and talking about your own feelings.

The 5-Day Friendship Challenge in our digital Challenges Kit also nurtures positive friendships with fun activities that teach kindness, empathy, inclusivity, and the qualities of a good friendship.

Help Them Overcome These 3 Common Friendship Challenges

The following are challenges children regularly face as they navigate friendships with others and tips on how to help your child manage these difficult situations.

1. Bossiness
If your child is being bossy...
Bossiness is a frequent issue in childhood friendships, especially with younger children. This is partly because children are still learning to express their wants and needs.
If your child is being bossed around...

Remind them to ask for what they want respectfully, rather than demanding it. Explain that although they can ask people for something, people have the right to say no. In the same way, she has the right to say no to others.

G ive them the words to say instead. Simply saying, "Be nice" is not specific enough to be helpful to young children. For instance, if your child says, "I want the orange ball! You play with the red ball!" tell her, "Instead, say, 'I would like to play with the orange ball. Will you play with the red ball?'" The more you can provide children with respectful phrasing in context, the more they'll learn important social-emotional skills.

P rovide your child with choices. Sometimes children who are bossy are simply trying to have some degree of control over their lives. For younger children, offer only two choices to keep it simple. For older children, you may offer 3-5 choices. For instance, you might ask your child whether she would like to wear her blue shirt or her pink shirt to school. Would she like pancakes or waffles? Even if the choices are small, giving your child more autonomy may reduce the urge to boss others around.

Recognize and encourage the improvement as your child begins using manners and making requests more politely (e.g., "You did it! You were kind and respectful.").

What if your child is the one being bossed around by others?

Role-play. Practice scenarios in which a child is behaving bossily, then have your child practice responding politely, but assertively.

Give them the words to say. For instance, you might practice saying, "I don't want to play with the blocks right now. Maybe I will play with the blocks later."

If the bossy child responds by insulting your child, have your child practice saying, "I don't like it when you call me names. Please call me by name instead." Assertiveness is a difficult skill even for adults, so children often need lots of practice.

2. Exclusion
If your child is being excluded...
Talk to your child about the importance of including others. Teach kindness and empathy . Encourage your child to talk to others who may not have many friends. Model kindness and acceptance of others in your daily life.

If your child is being excluded by others, your natural tendency is to rush in and protect them. You may want to say mean things about the other children, try to solve the problem for your child, or shield your child from the hurt and rejection she's feeling. We all understand the natural human desire to be liked and accepted.

Still, we can't save our children from these difficult experiences . Instead, we should teach them how to cope with and manage them. If the situation occurs again, your child will have the skills to handle it, whether you are there or not.

When your child talks to you about being excluded by others, listen. Don't rush in with solutions or anger toward the other children, and do not overreact. Simply listen and help your child process the emotions she is feeling.

Instill confidence and the understanding that what others think about her does not define her or change who she is. In fact, what others think about her is shaped by their own life experiences, beliefs, and preferences. It has everything to do with them and nothing to do with her.

Use analogies. With my students, I sometimes use the example of watching a movie. If a group of people watches a movie together, movie, some will love it, and some will hate it. Some will think it's OK. Yet everyone watched the same movie.

Encourage your child to celebrate who she is, rather than fearing what others will think of her. The people who enjoy her genuine personality are the people she should call friends.

A sk her to list her positive qualities. Remind her of the things that make her unique and wonderful.

M ake a friendship tree, listing all the friends she knows in all areas of life. Who are her friends at school, on her sports teams, in the neighborhood, at church, etc.? This activity can remind your child of all the positive friendships she does have, rather than focusing on a few children who exclude her.

C ast a wide net. Involve your child in extracurricular activities and help her expand her social circle. If exclusion is happening in one place, like school , she'll still have a positive support system on her soccer team or in her karate class.

T alk with your child about how to cope with situations that make her feel left out or hurt. Different children may cope in different ways, so discuss and experiment with different strategies. It may help your child to take deep breaths, to write or draw, to silently recite positive affirmations , or to remember that she will spend time with her soccer friends after school. For some children, "coping cards" that list helpful strategies are a useful portable tool.

Unfortunately, exclusion and rejection are part of life. Although you can't eliminate them from your child's life entirely, you provide her with strategies to navigate these experiences.

Don't forget to download our FREE Affirmation Bracelets. The affirmation bracelets are great for boosting a child's confidence!

3. Arguments

Friendships inevitably involve disagreements from time to time. It's important to teach children how to handle these disagreements in a healthy manner. The following steps can help:

M odel peaceful conflict resolution. Demonstrate taking deep breaths to remain calm, using "I feel" statements rather than attacking statements, listening to both sides of an issue, and then trying to solve the problem and/or come to a compromise.

Set clear rules against unhealthy behaviors like a door slamming, sarcasm, ridicule, name-calling, and physical harm.

When your child has disagreements, remind them of the peaceful conflict resolution strategies you use in your home. It's okay to walk away and take a few deep breaths to collect yourself. When you're ready, share your point of view using respectful language, such as, "I felt hurt when you laughed at me."

Next, listen to the other person's point of view without interrupting. Assume that the person is doing their best and did not do anything intentionally malicious. If necessary, make amends with a hug or a handshake and come up with a mutual resolution.

Explain to your child that in a friendship, they shouldn't be trying to "win" arguments. Instead, they should work together to find a solution that satisfies both people. And although it's okay to feel sad or mad, and it's okay to disagree, it is okay to be disrespectful or cruel to others, and it is not okay for others to be disrespectful or cruel to them.

Seeing your child struggle with friendships doesn't get easier, but these tools will give you positive, productive responses that allow your child to move forward with new coping strategies and friendship skills.

Looking for additional growth mindset resources for your child? Our popular Big Life Journal - 2nd Edition (ages 7-10) helps children develop strong Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) and growth mindset skills through inspiring stories, colorful illustrations, and engaging guided activities. In this beautifully illustrated journal, children learn how to believe in themselves, face challenges with confidence, and use mistakes as opportunities to grow!

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3 Ways to Help Children Navigate Friendship Challenges

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As parents, we can help them manage difficult feelings, cope with the complexities of relationships, and grow from these experiences. Here are some helpful tips for guiding your child through common friendship challenges like bossiness, exclusion, and disagreements. In the process, your child will learn valuable lifelong skills that include empathy, assertiveness, and conflict resolution.

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Factors such as poverty, exposure to violence, a lack of social support, and unstable family environments can contribute to an increased risk of violent behavior. Socioeconomic conditions and community influences play significant roles.

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If your friend get jealously when you with others

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If your friend get jealously when you with others

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Teach students to express:

Sincere Expression:

The candid expression of not wanting to seek new friends can potentially make the friendship more genuine and open. This straightforward expression contributes to building trust and understanding.

Self-Reflection Awareness:

The awareness of self-critique, acknowledging that there are times when one may be too lazy to seek new friends, can prompt personal reflection, change, and growth. It may lead to a deeper level of self-understanding.

Humorous Element:

Mentioning the laziness in seeking new friends with a touch of humor can make the conversation light-hearted and amusing, fostering a relaxed atmosphere.

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Drug or alcohol abuse can impair judgment, reduce inhibitions, and contribute to aggressive behavior. Substance abuse issues are often intertwined with other risk factors for violence

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Teach students that in social circles, we should not attempt to assimilate or participate in parts that are not suitable for ourselves

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Teach students that in social circles, we should not attempt to assimilate or participate in parts that are not suitable for ourselves

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1. Stay True to Yourself:

Collaborate with social circles that truly align with who you are, maintaining authenticity and sincerity. Avoid changing yourself to fit in with others, but instead, find people whose values and interests align with yours.

2. Respect Differences:

Ensure that you respect diverse perspectives and values within your social circle. Diversity among people adds richness and interest to social circles.

3. Find Resonance:

Seek out individuals who share similar thoughts and goals, allowing you to build deeper connections. Relationships based on resonance often endure and carry greater significance.

4. Avoid Compulsion:

Refrain from forcing yourself to participate in social activities that make you uncomfortable. Choose environments that make you feel at ease and happy.

5. Learn to Say No:

Learn to decline proposals that do not align with your values or are not suitable for your social circle. Maintain your stance and principles without sacrificing them to please others.

6. Discover Common Ground:

Look for commonalities within your social circle, enabling you to establish more profound connections. Shared interests and values form a solid foundation for friendships.

7. Maintain an Open Mind:

While you shouldn't try to fit into an unsuitable social circle, keep an open mind to new experiences. Sometimes, you may find interesting and valuable connections in unexpected places.

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Assimilation is the cognitive process of making new information fit in with your existing understanding of the world. Essentially, when you encounter something new, you process and make sense of it by relating it to things that you already know.

Assimilation refers to a part of the adaptation process initially proposed by Jean Piaget. Through assimilation, we take in new information or experiences and incorporate them into our existing ideas. The process is somewhat subjective, because we tend to modify experience or information to fit in with our pre-existing beliefs.

Assimilation plays an important role in how we learn about the world around us. In early childhood, children are constantly assimilating new information and experiences into their existing knowledge about the world.

However, this process does not end with childhood. As people encounter new things and interpret these experiences, they make both small and large adjustments to their existing ideas about the world around them.

Assimilation vs. Accommodation

Piaget believed that there are two basic ways that we can adapt to new experiences and information: assimilation and accommodation.

Assimilation is the easiest method because it does not require a great deal of adjustment. Through this process, we add new information to our existing knowledge base, sometimes reinterpreting these new experiences so that they will fit in with previously existing information.

In assimilation, children make sense of the world by applying what they already know. It involves fitting reality and what they experience into their current cognitive structure. A child's understanding of how the world works, therefore, filters and influences how they interpret reality.

For example, imagine that your neighbors have a daughter who you have always known to be sweet, polite, and kind. One day, you glance out your window and see the girl throwing a snowball at your car. It seems out of character and rather rude.

How do you interpret this new information? If you use the process of assimilation, you might dismiss the girl's behavior, believing that it's something she witnessed a classmate doing and that she does not mean to be impolite.

You're not revising your opinion of the girl during assimilation; you are simply adding new information to your existing knowledge. She's still kind, but now you know that she also has a mischievous side to her personality.

If you were to utilize the second method of adaptation described by Piaget, the young girl's behavior might cause you to reevaluate your opinion of her. This process is what Piaget referred to as accommodation, in which old ideas are changed or even replaced based on new information.

Assimilation and accommodation both work in tandem as part of the learning process. Some information is incorporated into our existing schemas through the process of assimilation, while other information leads to the development of new schemas or total transformations of existing ideas through the process of accommodation.

Examples of Assimilation

Piaget did not believe that children just passively take in information. He argued that they actively try to make sense of the world, constantly forming new ideas and experimenting with those ideas. Examples of assimilation include:

A child sees a new type of dog that they've never seen before and immediately points to the animal and says, "Dog!"

A chef learns a new cooking technique

A computer programmer learns a new programming language

Another common example would be how children learn about different types of animals. A child might begin with a schema for a dog, which in the child's mind, is a small, four-legged animal.

As the child encounters new information in the world, the new information can then be assimilated or accommodated into this existing schema.

When the child encounters a horse, they might assimilate this information and immediately call the animal a dog. The process of accommodation then allows the child to adapt the existing schema to incorporate the knowledge that some four-legged animals are horses.

In each of these examples, the individual is adding information to their existing schema. Remember, if new experiences cause the person to alter or completely change their existing beliefs, then it is known as accommodation.

Reasons for Assimilation

Assimilation plays a significant role in allowing humans to adapt to and learn about their environment-especially during childhood when we're constantly learning new things.

Assimilation can be viewed as a mental shortcut that lets us process and categorize massive amounts of information at one time.

Of course, assimilation can have its drawbacks. There are times when new information doesn't fit neatly into an existing category or schema in our mind. This may lead to errors in judgment; such as a child calling a skunk a "kitty," for instance.

However, when the child is taught that this animal is, in fact, a skunk, the animal will be removed from their existing cat schema and enter a new mental category.

Equilibriation

Piaget also believed that as children learn, they strike a balance between the use of assimilation and accommodation. This process, known as equilibration, allows children to find a balance between applying their existing knowledge and adapting their behavior to new information.

According to Piaget, the learning process involves the following:

Assimilation: Attempting to interpret new information within the framework of existing knowledge

Accommodation: Making small changes to that knowledge in order to cope with things that don't fit those existing frameworks

Equilibration: Eventually adjusting existing schemas or forming new ones in order to adjust to a new understanding

A Word From Verywell

Assimilation and accommodation are complementary learning processes that play a role at each stage of cognitive development. During the sensorimotor stage, for example, some information is assimilated, while some experiences must be accommodated. It is through these processes that infants, children, and adolescents gain new knowledge and progress through the stages of development.

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Assimilation and Jean Piaget's Adaptation Process

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Assimilation refers to a part of Jean Piaget's adaptation process in which people take in new information and incorporate it into our existing ideas. Learn more.

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Personal disputes, conflicts, or relationship issues can escalate to violence in some cases. This may include disputes over money, power, relationships, or revenge

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Some murders are committed with criminal intent, such as those related to organized crime, gang activity, or involvement in illegal enterprises

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CRIMINAL INTENT Definition & Meaning - Black’s Law Dictionary

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Definition of Criminal Intent: Criminal intent is a necessary component of a “conventional” crime and involves a conscious decision on the part of one party to injure or deprive another.

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In some instances, people may commit murder due to ideological beliefs, extremist views, or hate motivations targeting a specific race, religion, or group

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Neve Gordon is Professor of International Law at Queen Mary University of London.

"Often, the ideology of hatred operates side by side and in tandem with humanitarianism - the American initiative to build secular schools for girls in Pakistan and Afghanistan is one example," says Niza Yanay [EPA]

After 9/11, hate began colonising new spheres, operating as a social and political force that manipulates and mobilises entire publics in very specific ways. Niza Yanay's new book The Ideology of Hatred: The Psychic Power of Discourse may very well change the way we think about hatred and its role in politics. Neve Gordon recently interviewed her in New York City in an effort to better understand her arguments.

Neve Gordon: When thinking of hatred, we usually think of a very strong personal feeling or emotion. What do you mean by the ideology of hatred? Can hatred be an ideology?

Niza Yanay: Let's begin with the concept of hatred. Before 9/11, the words hate and hatred were mostly used to describe an emotional reaction or byproduct of racism, anti-Semitism, misogyny, homophobia and the like. One would say that white supremacists, for example, hate blacks, or alternatively if someone hates blacks, we would say he was a white supremacist. After 9/11, the word hate began colonising new spheres, operating as a social and political force that can both manipulate and mobilise an entire public in very specific ways.

People began using the word hatred in the context of terrorism, particularly referring to Islamic groups who had expressed anger and criticism towards the West and the ravages of capitalism. The word hatred was thus transformed, becoming a signifier for danger, mostly the danger of Islam. In President Bush's rhetoric, the world was schematically divided between Muslims who hate on the one hand, and the West which had become the target of irrational hate on the other hand. I found it interesting that the West does not hate.

This distinction between hatred as an experience and hatred as ideology underscored the need to ask new questions about the relation between politics and hatred. And these new questions, I believe, need to focus on power relations between different groups, such as coloniser and colonised, ruler and subject, and not so much on the personal experience of specific individuals who experience hatred (though such questions are still important too).
NG: Can you give me a concrete example of this ideology at work?
NY: Most people consider "suicide bombings" as motivated by hate, while very few people consider air strikes on populated areas to be hate crimes. The media often describes the suicide attack as a hate crime, but I have never come across a report describing the US drone attacks in Pakistan - that have killed over 3,500 people - as hate crimes. This suggests that hatred as ideology is at work. And this ideology helps determine who is blamed for being the initiators of hate, who becomes the target of hatred, and, in fact, when hatred counts as hatred at all.
NG: I see the asymmetrical relationship and the fact that hatred as a causal factor is associated with certain groups and not others, but what exactly is this ideology of hatred?
NY: Let me give you an example to help clarify my claim. Think about a young adolescent Jewish girl in Israel who leads a comfortable life and has never interacted face-to-face with Palestinians. This is a very reasonable assumption, since Israel is a totally segregated society. Why, it is interesting to ask, would a girl who has never met a Palestinian speak with such vehemence and personal hatred against Palestinians and Arabs in general? Why do so many Jewish citizens of Israel, who have never been hurt by Palestinians, openly admit to intense hatred? This articulates a national ideology of hatred and not merely a personal hatred.

Of course, you can immediately claim that there is a real danger. Many Israeli Jews know someone who has been injured by terrorism. You might also say that since the Palestinians hate us, therefore we hate them.

All of these automatic answers demonstrate the effectiveness and the power of state ideologies of hatred. In the book, I try to go beyond these kinds of normative responses by paying attention to the difference between hatred as a response to power and hatred as the operation of power.

It is not surprising that people react with hatred toward those who humiliate them, control their movement, or deny their rights. There is nothing theoretically interesting in the individual or collective experience of anger and hate as a reaction to power that imposes helplessness on us or denies our very being. This is hatred as a response to power.

But there is also hatred as an operation of power. Israel's persistent claim that it has no partner for peace is, I would claim, part of an ideology of hatred. The role of Israel's no-partner myth is to portray the Palestinians as primitive and warmongering and in this way it hopes to circumvent and conceal its own desire to receive moral approval from the Palestinians.

Once we understand how hatred operates as an apparatus of power relations, and particularly how the discourse of hatred is motivated and mobilised in national conflicts, serious questions about misrecognition, veiled desires and symptomatic expressions arise. These questions have, to a large extent, been left unaddressed in studies of hatred between groups in conflict.
NG: I am not sure I follow.
NY: Sometimes when we desire something that is unthinkable (for example, the love of someone who is forbidden) and we repress our desire, it ends up surfacing in different ways. In the book, I examine language, laws and practices that hide that which is repressed; namely, the desires we either fear or refuse to admit to ourselves.

We know that when a child tells his father "I hate you", it could mean "I don't receive the love I want from you". Hate speech often represents such veiled desires and fears. The disavowal of our desires and the misrecognition of our fears are defence mechanisms and these mechanisms, I claim, can have extremely dangerous effects.

So, for me, this intense ideology of hatred signifies the return of the repressed; the return of that which is denied and reappears as a symptom in "hate" speech and practice. I therefore consider the cultivation of hatred in national discourse to be a psychic political defence strategy. Of course, on the individual level hate can be accompanied by a visceral experience, but as a political concept and as part of the national discourse hatred is a word that serves more to conceal than to reveal.
NG: So you are saying that there is something new going on here? How is today's ideology of hatred different from other forms of hatred we witnessed during the 20th century?
NY: I am not saying there is something necessarily new, but rather that we need to broaden our understanding of the ideology of hatred, its motivations and the way it operates.

Anti-Semitism is an ideology of hatred and so are racism and homophobia. But studies of anti-Semitism have taken hatred as an obvious emotion of separation and exclusion. What I am saying is that that the concept of hatred is much more ambivalent than we tend to acknowledge, and that without understanding the attachment and intimate relations between the Jews and non-Jews in Germany, we cannot really understand the hatred.

The fear of "Judaisation" ( Verjudung) or "Jewification" of German culture, the fear of the "Jewish spirit" overtaking the German nation, was not only a fear of contamination and contagion, as many scholars have remarked. These concepts allude to a deeper anxiety regarding the invasion of the German body, in spirit and mind, from within. Thus, this anxiety signifies a deep sense of intimacy and perhaps a desire to mimic the Jew. Psychoanalytically speaking, such prohibited thought often transforms itself into a symptomatic form of speech and behaviour. This approach to the concept of hatred leads me to ask what, for example, the relation is between intimacy and genocide.
NG: Am I correct then to say that you are using the term ideology not in the Marxist or liberal way, but rather in a way that is more attuned to psychoanalysis?
NY: To a certain extent, yes. The point I want to make is that we need to start thinking about the ideology of hatred as a symptom of desire. This might sound contradictory to many people, but actually hatred is always constructed within an already inevitable bond between two unequal groups or sides of rival power. Intense hatred assumes a prior and intense relationship.

Consider the famous speeches of President Habyarimana of Rwanda between 1973 and 1994. He continuously attacked the Tutsi for being counter-revolutionary bourgeoisie traitors; but at the same time, he constantly referred to them as brothers. This, I argue, is typical and symptomatic.

The use of intimate familial language to characterise the so-called traitor is a common practice in many ideologies of hatred. So, when we hear, speak of, or examine hatred, we must pay particular attention to issues of proximity, attachment, intimacy, desire and even love. Of course, these forces are not obvious when we think of hatred. But, if we want to understand how people become our hated enemy we must study the conditions of closeness and proximity.
NG: Someone might say that this is counter-intuitive. Don't we commonly understand hatred in terms of distance, difference and enmity?
NY: You are right to say that the ideology of hatred produces and means to produce separation and estrangement. But this is exactly my point. The paradox of hatred is that hatred aims to produce distance precisely because the two rivals are considered to be too close, too intertwined.

Think about the Hutu and the Tutsi, the Serbs and the Croats, the Turks and the Armenians, the Israelis and the Palestinians, and so on. I am not simply saying that love can turn into hatred or vice versa, but that hatred is always an ambivalent experience and a hyperbolic concept. One cannot hate an individual or a group without attachment and closeness, without love. Lack of attachment tends to produce indifference, not hatred.
NG: What then is the relation between the psyche and politics?
NY: First of all, the psyche and politics are not separate spheres. They operate together, although the mechanisms they deploy and their forms of visibility differ.

I am certainly not the first to highlight the absent, repressed, or the hidden in the political; how what is said often conceals what is left unsaid or how the visible veils what goes unrepresented. In a world characterised by a multitude of conflicts and hatreds, it would be misguided to continue overlooking the forces of the political unconscious.

Yet, my contribution has to do with my examination of the ideology of hatred. I believe that by excavating the ideology of hatred we can reveal how the political unconscious operates in the current political climate - through desire and its repression, through love and its disavowal, and through attachment and its elision. Once the unconscious workings of the ideology of hatred are laid bare then other future discourses, which recognise their ambivalence towards the other, suddenly become possible.

Let me give another example. The Israeli government forces the Palestinians to declare loyalty to the state of Israel as the condition for entering dialogue. No matter how many times Palestinians in Israel declare loyalty to the state or denounce terrorism, their words will not be heard and accepted because for Jewish Israelis this is not enough; they want the Palestinians to love them. Without love it is difficult for them to maintain their moral superiority. But at the same time the Jews in Israel will never ever admit to this.

So for me, the discourse of loyalty and betrayal, and particularly the repetitious demand that the Palestinians be loyal signifies that something else is going on here. It is about something the Jews want and will not get, or want and will never acknowledge. The repetition suggests that unconscious forces are at work here and in this case they are not individual but political.
NG: This brings us to the second part of the title of your book, "The Psychic Power of Discourse". When you say that to understand hatred we should focus on unconscious mechanisms, you obviously allude to a political unconscious. What do you mean by political unconscious? Are you saying that political discourse has an unconscious?
NY: I know that for most political scientists or sociologists, theorising the psyche within the political and the social is irrelevant to practice and to questions of war and peace. But I believe that this pervasive perspective will lead us nowhere in terms of changing the conditions of conflicts rooted in hatred.

Just think of the repeated, obsessive notice in the NYC subways: "If you see something, say something."

Such an utterance not only speaks of suspicious objects, but creates relational mistrust that paradoxically bonds people of all walks of life together through a fearful gaze, suspicion and prejudice. So, hatred has become a political apparatus that creates a community through the horror of the strange and the different.

The pervasive refusal to raise the question of the unconscious, dismissing it as irrelevant to politics, engenders all kinds of theoretical blind spots. This is not to say that hatred is only unconscious or invisible. On the contrary, hatred is a forceful experience with devastating and injurious consequences. But in sharp contrast to its manifestation, the mechanisms of its production remain obscure.

For me, the most urgent task is to explore these blind spots, which I believe can shed light on how the ideology of hatred is manufactured. This, in my mind, is the key problem of the ideology of hatred.

Israel continues to build settlements on
Palestinian land
NG: This appears to be connected to the relation you mention between the ideology of hatred and humanitarianism. Can you say something about this?
NY: Often, the ideology of hatred operates side by side and in tandem with humanitarianism. The American initiative to build secular schools for girls in Pakistan and Afghanistan is one example, while Israeli food and medical aid to Gaza in the midst of Israel's military attacks on the Strip is another.

Such humanitarian acts allow the Americans and Israelis to think of themselves as decent and righteous people. But in effect, these humanitarian interventions are the continuation of war and violence in a language of "love full of hatred" or "hatred full of love". It is precisely this language that sheds light on the political unconscious and the psychic power of discourse.
NG: Could you further elaborate on the phrase "hatred full of love"?
NY: I would begin by responding with a rhetorical question: You intuitively seem to understand the notion of "hatred full of love", and yet doesn't this notion depend on a politics of the unconscious?

But, your question is well taken, because "hatred full of love" (and also its reversal) depicts concrete situations and relations. These phrases are not a metaphor for conflict relations. The prohibition to love the other, at work within national politics, is perhaps the core paradoxical symptom of nationalism and its defence mechanisms.

Albert Memmi provides a poignant example of how this works in the colonial context, when he describes how the colonial experience is informed by the paradox of love and hate. On the one hand, the colonialist wishes to dismiss the colonial subject from thought and to imagine the colony clean of its natives, but, on the other hand, the coloniser knows that without its colonial subjects the colony and his domination has no meaning.

The coloniser's desire of the colonised signifies an unconscious politics according to which the coloniser must keep the colonised subject alive. Only when the coloniser becomes indifferent to the life of the other does genocide or ethnic cleansing may occur. This leads me to maintain that acknowledging intimacy may actually prevent the genocidal impulse.

NG: I understand that hatred is constituted through the repression of love, denial of attachment and fears of dependency. What will happen if we do come to recognise our state of dependency on the despised other, or our desire of the hated other? Are you saying that hatred can ipso facto form the possibility of love in spite of a history of hatred? That appears to be a very optimistic theory!

NY: Absolutely. In hate, love is never lost. And under the right circumstances it can always be remembered.

This is precisely why I conclude the book with the idea of political friendship. I believe that the politics of hatred can change because the enemy is forever the lost friend. Political friendship calls for peace without any prior conditions. It means a certain way of coming together with those who are not "one of us".

When Anwar Sadat declared in public that he was willing to visit Jerusalem, he was taking a risk that Egypt might "lose face". He sent out his call for friendship and peace presumably without knowing whether and how Israel would respond. In that particular case, Menachem Begin returned the call by inviting Sadat to Jerusalem; a year later that visit was followed by a peace treaty between Israel and Egypt. Someone must offer friendship, and it cannot be the one who has no power to lose.

You might, of course, ask, what happens if the other refuses the request for friendship.

In this case, one must follow the footsteps of Sadat; the risk must be taken in the face of a possible refusal. It is important to keep in mind that no friendship is devoid of disputes, injury, pain, betrayal, tensions and hate, but friendship, for the sake of peace, can embrace hatred and indeed diffuse it. This new demarcation of relations gives rise to a radically new discourse of peace. I am not talking about "true peace", "perpetual peace", or "absolute peace". All these terms have only served to sustain war. I truly believe that by forcing ourselves to choose friendship, the unthinkable peace becomes thinkable. The attachment, which was disavowed, becomes possible to reclaim.
Neve Gordon is the author of I srael's Occupation and can be reached through his website.

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'The Ideology of Hatred': An interview with Niza Yanay

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Niza Yanay discusses her newest book, and how 'hatred' plays a role in politics.

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Teach students that if you feel that your friend is not as close to you as you'd like, there are several steps you can take to strengthen the friendship and build a closer connection:

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Teach students that if you feel that your friend is not as close to you as you'd like, there are several steps you can take to strengthen the friendship and build a closer connection:

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1. Initiate Communication:

Take the initiative to reach out and communicate with your friend. Share updates about your life, ask about theirs, and express interest in what they have to say. Regular communication helps maintain and strengthen connections.

2. Plan Activities Together:

Suggest doing activities together that you both enjoy. Whether it's going for coffee, attending events, or participating in a hobby, spending quality time together can deepen your bond.

3. Be Open and Vulnerable:

Share your thoughts and feelings with your friend, and encourage them to do the same. Being open and vulnerable can create a sense of intimacy and trust in the relationship.

4. Express Your Feelings:

If you feel comfortable, express to your friend that you value the relationship and would like to grow closer. Communicate your desire for a deeper connection and see if they share similar feelings.

5. Listen Actively:

Actively listen to what your friend has to say. Show genuine interest in their thoughts, feelings, and experiences. This demonstrates that you value their perspective and contributes to a more meaningful connection.

6. Respect Boundaries:

Respect your friend's boundaries and give them space when needed. Not everyone expresses closeness in the same way, and some individuals may need more personal space.

7. Be Supportive:

Offer support and encouragement during both good and challenging times. Being there for your friend and showing that you care builds trust and strengthens the emotional connection.

8. Find Common Interests:

Discover and explore common interests that you both share. Having shared activities or hobbies can provide a foundation for a closer friendship.

9. Celebrate Milestones:

Acknowledge and celebrate important milestones in your friend's life. Whether it's birthdays, achievements, or significant events, expressing your joy for their successes strengthens the bond.

10. Give It Time:

Building a close friendship takes time. Be patient and allow the relationship to develop naturally. Genuine connections often deepen over time through shared experiences.

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Friendship often involves effort on both sides. In a healthy friendship, both individuals may put forth an effort to give each other equal attention and care. However, if you notice that your friendship is only thriving due to your actions and not your friend's, you might be experiencing a one-sided friendship.

Having a friend that you care about that is not offering the same care to your connection as you can be distressing and challenging. Knowing the signs of a one-sided friendship can help you discuss this topic with your friend and find support for a healthier connection in the future.

What Is A One-Sided Friendship?

A one-sided friendship can involve one friend making most, if not all, of the effort to continue a platonic relationship.

The friend might also take an interest in the other person's life in honest conversation and try to keep conversations flowing when they die down.

Not all healthy friendships between friends necessarily include an equal amount of communication. However, if one person always initiates conversation or keeps conversations going, it may be a one-sided friendship. Below are a few other signs of a one-sided friendship.

You Always Text First

When initiating communication and emotional support, you might be the first to do so. Although it can be normal for this to occur sometimes, it might signify an underlying issue if long periods of your friendship have consisted of this behavior. Ask yourself what your friend would do if you stopped initiating conversation or support. Would you go months without speaking? If so, your friend may have different priorities than you about communication. One-sided behaviors and desires in a friendship can hurt your self-esteem, self-worth, and self-confidence.

However, note that some individuals might not value the same types of communication. For example, your friend might be someone who doesn't like to text but enjoys spending time together in person, whereas you value frequent text conversations. Neither of these preferences is necessarily unhealthy, but a conversation about these preferences could be beneficial. In other cases, a friend might stop reaching out when they experience a life transition, such as moving, a new relationship, or a new baby.

They Only Contact You To Ask For A Favor

If you only receive messages or contact from your friend when they need emotional, physical, or financial support, it could indicate they're taking advantage of you. Instead of asking you to hang out or to strike up a conversation, they may feel that you have helped them in the past and will do so again. Although occasionally helping a friend can be healthy and kind, frequently helping someone who doesn't return the favor or takes you for granted may not be beneficial. In these cases, setting boundaries on your time, money, and support may be valuable.

They Only Talk About Themselves

If your friend only talks about themselves, interrupts you when you talk about yourself, or doesn't ask you questions about your life, it may be a sign your friendship is one-sided. In a friendship, sharing information back and forth and offering guidance, support, and kindness to each other can be healthy. However, if you feel your friend doesn't know much about you, ask yourself why that may be.

Consider whether your friend supports you when you're having a bad day or how they've responded to you in the past when you've experienced stress. Then, consider how you've responded to them in these situations. If it helps, write down how these experiences differ and how you want your friend to make changes to feel that the relationship is two-sided.

They Prefer The Company Of Other Friends

It is healthy to have more than one friend. However, if you consider your friend your best friend and want to spend lots of time together and they consider you an acquaintance or general friend, you may have different expectations for the relationship. A conversation about your place in their life can be beneficial as you decide whether the relationship is one-sided.

They Don't Come To You

It may signify a one-sided friendship if you constantly visit your friend's house, neighborhood, or favorite shops and restaurants, and they don't do the same for you. Consider the circumstances surrounding this situation before deciding whether their behavior is founded. For example, your friend might not have transportation, funds, or a way to reach your area.

If you have been over-extending yourself to reach them, consider setting boundaries on how often you can or whether you pay for the transportation or ask them to help. It may signify a one-sided or unfair friendship if there's no reason for your friend not to visit you in your area, and they continue to choose not to.

Why Do One-Sided Friendships Occur?

There are several reasons why one-sided friendships may occur. At times, a friend might be acting unhealthily toward you. At other times, they may not know their behavior is one-sided or may be experiencing a challenging event that makes it difficult to offer the same behavior that you offer them. If your relationship lacks communication about boundaries, goals, and communication styles, your friend might not know how you're feeling or what you need from them.

Talking to your friend may help you understand why their behavior isn't up to par with what you expect or need from them. Ask questions and try not to assume an ulterior motive unless you've been attempting to converse about this topic and feel disrespected. A few other reasons your friendship might be one-sided can include the following.

You Want Friends More Than You Respect Your Boundaries

If you want to have friends but haven't found many healthy people to be friends with, you might make friends with people who disrespect your boundaries. If you fear being alone or not having friends, being the friend of these people might feel more comfortable to you than the idea of the unknown. However, unhealthy friendships can negatively impact your mental health and well-being. Studies show that healthy relationships are closely tied to long-term well-being and mental wellness.

Social connection is often meaningful and can significantly impact an individual's life. Friendship can bring fun, joy, and adventure to your daily schedule. However, if your friends do not offer the same effort you are willing to give, you may feel hurt, left out, or unloved. These feelings can be painful, and they may not be necessary. Finding healthy friendships is often possible through various methods, and being able to set boundaries and end relationships when they don't fit your needs is one way to find them.

Your Friend Is Using You

If you notice your friend taking advantage of specific resources like emotional support, transportation, money, advice, or status, it may be that they are using these resources for their benefit and not out of a desire to be your friend. In these cases, you might notice your friend not offering the same resources back, not checking in with you, or not offering you emotional support or care.

You might be able to tell this is the case if your friend stops talking to you when they receive what they've asked for elsewhere. For example, if you give your friend a ride every weekend and they stop contacting you when they buy a car, it might signify that they were only contacting you for a ride. Studies show that healthy friendships can cause greater life satisfaction, so finding a friend that enjoys spending time with you for you instead of what you offer them can be beneficial.

They View You As An Acquaintance

For many, the definition of "friend" can differ. You might consider someone a close friend when they only consider you an acquaintance. Social media can impact this occurrence for many, as it offers a way to connect with people without meeting them face-to-face. In these cases, asking your friend what they think of you might be beneficial. You may not be close friends if they're not open to discussing your friendship.

They Are Introverted Or Struggle With Socialization

You might find that your friend feels the same way about you but struggles to socialize or sometimes feels introverted. They might not start conversations out of fear, uncertainty, or the assumption that you feel the same. In addition, they might invite you to their home or neighborhood since it's familiar to them. When making friendships with introverted people, discuss social boundaries to understand what feels best to each of you.

You've Lost Common Interests

If you've been friends with your friend for a few years or more, you might find that your interests have changed over time. Your friend might not know what to talk to you about or feel you don't have much in common. If you think you've grown apart, consider having an open discussion with your friend about their feelings about the relationship and what might benefit from a change.

Circumstances Have Changed

Life circumstances can change friendships. For example, your friend might have a new job, recently enrolled in college, a new relationship, or a young child to care for. If you have a long-term friendship, coping with these changes in your friend's life can be challenging if you're used to talking to them and seeing them often. For example, you might feel hurt if they suddenly have a new partner and do not want to spend time with you. Note that the beginning stages of a romantic relationship can be emotionally intense and often become more manageable over time as the stages of love change.

If you feel like your friendship is slipping away, determine if this relationship is important to you. If you no longer have the same interests, it might be safe to let go. If you feel the relationship is one-sided, it may be the healthiest option to stop communicating, set a boundary, or ask for a change. For some, a change in the amount of communication or expectations for a friendship may be beneficial.

Not all friends expect the same from each other, and you might find that communicating less but staying in touch feels healthy to you. If possible, talk with your friend and gauge how they feel. If you two are still close but can't get together as often as you want, you can stay in touch through email, texts, or the occasional phone call and still potentially have a meaningful friendship.

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Are You In A Healthy Friendship Or Being Taken Advantage Of?

How To Handle A One-Sided Friendship

If you determine your friendship is one-sided for an unhealthy reason, it may be healthiest to end it and make new friends. You don't have to stay in a dynamic with someone who doesn't appreciate you. A one-sided relationship can feel unfulfilling, and there may be others in your community that align more with your goals for a friendship. However, if your friend is going through a difficult time or doesn't know how you feel, sitting down to converse can be beneficial before deciding on a course of action. Consider the following methods of handling a one-sided connection.

Have A Conversation

Communication can be the healthiest way to understand what someone else is feeling and let them know how you feel. Your friend might not recognize their behavior as one-sided and apologize or make a change when you bring it up. Try to avoid sounding accusatory or hostile when talking to them about it. Use "I" statements, such as, "I feel sad that we aren't talking as much lately."

Your friendship may be unhealthy if your friend acts hostile, dismissive, or unkind. You can try to problem-solve or offer a chance for resolution. However, pushing a conversation or an idea your friend is not open to may cause you to feel worse. In some cases, ending the friendship may be the healthiest option if your friend is not willing to communicate or try to change their behaviors.

Ask For A Change

Ask for the changes you need. If you're unsure what you want, brainstorm ideas before meeting with your friend. For example, if you're always traveling to meet them at their house, ask them if they'd come to see you at yours next time. If you're constantly texting them first, ask them if they'd be open to suggesting hangouts or sending check-ins occasionally. It may be an unhealthy dynamic if they ignore you, act dismissive, or are unkind.

End The Friendship

Losing a friend can be challenging to cope with. However, if you are hurting in your friendship, it may benefit you in the long run. Caring for yourself as you grieve the loss can be valuable; you don't have to do it alone. There are many ways to make new friends, and you can reach out to others in your social circle to ask for advice or support.

See A Counselor

Friendships can be hard to manage. You can also talk to a counselor if you're struggling to find someone in your life to connect with. Counselors are trained in healthy relationship skills and coping mechanisms for loneliness and social challenges. Many people can benefit from seeking out counseling when ending one-sided friendships. Conversely, a counselor can help you figure out how to get your friendship back on track and how to stay away from one-sided relationships in the future. They may show you how to cope with your feelings and set boundaries to avoid hurt.

If you're ready to reach out to a counselor, a relationship and friendship therapist like those through an online platform like Regain may benefit you. Regain offers connection to thousands of therapists, many of which offer individual therapy focused on how relationships in your life impact your mental health and well-being. In addition, you can choose between phone, video, and live chat sessions with your licensed therapist.

One study on online therapy platforms found that 71% of participants found them more effective than in-person options. The participants also reported a more significant quality of life after treatment that lasted in the long term. If you're looking for someone to talk to about your friendships, know that an online therapist can offer a cost-effective and flexible option.

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What Is A One-Sided Friendship And How To Avoid It | Regain

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A one-sided friendship can be a challenge. You put all the effort in for your friend, yet they don't seem to do the same. Why? We will explain the reason.

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Murders within domestic relationships, often referred to as intimate partner violence, can stem from power and control dynamics, jealousy, or a history of abuse

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Some murders result from impulsive actions without premeditation. These acts may be triggered by intense emotions such as anger, fear, or frustration

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Impulsivity is the tendency to act without thinking, for example if you blurt something out, buy something you had not planned to, or run across the street without looking.

To a degree, this kind of behavior is common, especially in children or teenagers, and isn't necessarily a sign of trouble. It's typical for them to act impulsively because their brains are still developing. But in some cases, it can be a part of certain conditions.

Trichotillomania. Also known as " hair-pulling disorder," this is when you can't stop pulling out your hair - on top of your head, eyebrows, eyelids, or anywhere else on your body.

Kleptomania. This is when you can't resist the urge to steal and feel a sense of relief when you do it, though you might not even keep what you steal.

Pyromania. This is the urge to set fires or being obsessed about setting fires. It's rare -- only around 3% of psychiatric inpatients are diagnosed with pyromania.

Pathological gambling. While many people make a small handshake wager here and there or play the occasional office pool, people who have this disorder can get caught up in it to the point that it affects their work or relationships and the stress takes a toll on their health.

If impulsivity is part of a condition, the treatment depends on the cause. One general approach is applied behavioral analysis, where you learn to work through or better handle situations that tend to trigger your impulsive behavior.

Your doctor also might recommend medications. Antidepressants like selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or SSRIs, can help with impulse control disorders.

If the behavior is part of ADHD, medications prescribed for that condition might help. Those include amphetamine and dextroamphetamine ( Adderall) or methylphenidate ( Concerta, Daytrana, Methylin, Ritalin). Sometimes, nonstimulant medications like clonidine and guanfacine can help with impulse control, too.

Being ready for situations that can bring on impulsivity also helps. For example, you might carry a notebook either to doodle in to distract yourself or to write something down before saying it out loud. The idea here is to pause before you act impulsively, so you have a chance to think through whether what you're about to do is a good idea and what the consequences might be.

It's human nature to sometimes say or do something you wish you hadn't. But some people are impulsive often, maybe several times a day. Acting that way can lead to problems and regret.

If you notice a regular pattern of the following, it might be an issue:

Aggressive behavior

Restlessness

Interrupting others

Being easily distracted

Impulsive behavior can be a symtrom of several conditions. It can also be seen in patients with anxiety and autism spectrum disorders, as well as substance abuse. Some of the most common ones include:

Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Examples of impulsivity here include interrupting others who are talking, shouting out answers to questions, or having trouble waiting your turn when standing in line.

Bipolar disorder. This brain disorder affects your mood, energy level, and ability to do day-to-day activities. Impulsiveness can show up in behaviors like extreme spending habits or substance abuse.

Antisocial personality disorders. With these disorders, you pay little or no attention to right and wrong and tend to treat people badly without thinking about the consequences. Impulsive behavior linked to them can include substance abuse or other harmful actions and having a hard time with personal relationships.

These disorders are less common. People who have them act on urges to do things that harm them or others, or that aren't acceptable socially or are against the law. They can take many different forms, such as:

Intermittent explosive disorder. This is the tendency to lose your temper often, usually in short outbursts. Even the smallest of issues can trigger it.

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Learn more about the tendency to act without thinking and the conditions it can be linked to if it happens really often.

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In certain contexts, political or social unrest may contribute to violence and murders as a form of protest or expression of discontent

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‘Political Unrest: Factors and Impact’ published in ‘Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions’

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1. Choose a murder Mystery Kit:

- Start by selecting a murder mystery kit that is appropriate for the age and maturity level of your students. There are various pre-packaged kits available online that come with scripts, character profiles, and clues.

2. Familiarize Yourself with the Materials:

- Thoroughly read through the murder mystery kit to understand the plot, characters, and clues. Familiarize yourself with how the game is meant to progress, including key events and revelations.

3. Determine Class Size and Assign Characters:

- Based on the number of students in your class, decide on the appropriate murder mystery kit. Assign characters to each student, making sure to distribute roles that align with the plot and the students' personalities.

4. Introduce the Mystery to Students:

- Create excitement by introducing the murder mystery to your students. Provide an overview of the setting, the characters they will be playing, and the basic premise of the mystery.

5. Distribute Character Profiles:

- Provide each student with a character profile that includes information about their background, relationships with other characters, and any secrets they may be hiding. Encourage students to stay in character throughout the game.

6. Set the Scene:

- Create a captivating atmosphere by decorating the classroom to match the theme of the murder mystery. Use props, dim lighting, and background music to enhance the ambiance.

7. Explain the Rules:

- Clearly explain the rules of the game to the students. Emphasize the importance of collaboration, critical thinking, and paying attention to details. Briefly go over how the game will progress, including the different rounds and when clues will be revealed.

8. Initiate the Murder Mystery:

- Start the murder mystery, and let the students take on their roles. Encourage them to interact with each other, ask questions, and gather information. As the game progresses, periodically introduce new clues to keep the mystery unfolding.

9. Facilitate Discussions:

- Periodically pause the game to facilitate group discussions. This allows students to share information, discuss theories, and strategize on how to solve the mystery.

10. Reveal the Solution:

- At the conclusion of the game, gather the students and reveal the solution to the mystery. Discuss the different clues and how they contributed to solving the case.

11. Debrief and Reflect:

- Conduct a debriefing session where students can reflect on the experience. Discuss what they learned, how they collaborated, and any challenges they faced. Encourage them to share their favorite moments from the mystery.

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My murder mystery lesson is by far my students' favorite - and for good reason! They get to be a part of the story, walk around and engage with classmates, and compete to see who can solve the mystery first! Here's a link to my classroom mystery resources via TeachersPayTeachers, or read on to learn how to create your own.

4/26/20 Update! I also have a post on how to transfer this lesson to use with distance learning. Click here to check it out.

Update! I have a middle school version with a mystery about which student vandalized another student's art project. Click here for the TpT product

I actually don't use a murder. To tone it down a bit I wrote out the background that Angela, a cheerleader and valedictorian, was pushed down a stairwell. She was conscious for a bit (long enough to name suspects) but was then put into a medically-induced coma.

I chose high school as a setting because that is what my students are familiar with most. Having students as characters helps as well because they often understand student motivations better than adult motivations.

My first attempt at this I found a free murder mystery party online that I adapted for my needs. There are plenty out there, but be aware they often include very adult content and situations.

I included 15 characters in my story. I know many classes are larger than 15 students, but I have mine double up when that happens. You need at least 15 to obfuscate what really happened, but any more than that and it's overwhelming to the students trying to keep everything straight.

Here's a sample of one of my character cards I give to the students.

I break it down into different parts to help the students understand what is essential information for them to give out in order for the game to work. I also write out on each card if the person is or is not the assailant (or murderer depending on what you decide). The first time I only wrote out "You are the murderer" on the murderer's sheet, and half the students asked me if they were the murderer or not. So now I tell each student exactly where to look to know if they are the villain.

Part of my objective in this lesson is to teach the students what a red herring is: misleading information that seems like an essential clue, but actually leads down the wrong path. So of course I pack a ton into my characters information cards.

For example, the character above claims to not know if Kelly was in the stairwell or not; hinting that maybe Kelly pushed Angela. She didn't. When the student finds Kelly and asks her, Kelly says Summer saw her heading towards the stairwell (on the opposite side of the building where the incident occurred). When the student follows up with Summer, Summer's information card corroborates the whole story. However, Summer doesn't have a very good alibi...

Mine ends with one student having an alibi that clearly clashes with the others. It also has nothing to do with the relationship drama which is in itself a giant red herring.

There are so many characters in so many places, I actually got confused when I was writing it! I ended up sketching a quick map and figured if I needed one the students surely would too. You can give a copy to each student so they can write clues and information on it, or just post one on the board for a reference.

Here's what mine looks like.

I actually have another page as well since it is a two story building. It's small and not to scale, but it helps for the visual learners.

All good detectives need to take notes. I give my students a very simple worksheet that asks for the character's name, general information, possible motivation, and alibi/clues. I have students hand it in at the end as part of their assessment for the lesson. It shows me if they were able to ask the right questions, get all of the clues, and make inferences. For example, since Anna is on crutches and is on the first floor, she couldn't have made it undetected upstairs to sneak up on Angela, push her down the stairs, and run off without being noticed.

As soon as you give out the character cards, the students will no longer be listening to much in the way of instructions. Prior to giving out character cards, set the expectations and rules up front. Here are some guidelines I provide based on what I've seen in the past.

Unless specifically paired together, no one should be working together. Everyone is a suspect!

Do not give your character paper to anyone else for any reason. Guard it carefully.

Take the first five minutes to study your character. Understand their motives, character traits, and personality.

Take lots of notes. Something seemingly unimportant could turn out to be crucial information later.

You cannot lie.

Create your own details as long as it makes sense with your character and the story line.

Do not reenact any scenes.

Do not touch other students. (it's amazing how often I have to say this)

Go back and talk to people after you get new information about them.

So far I've used this game each year as an introduction to reading The Mousetrap by Agatha Christie. It's a quirky play, but my students love it. You could use it to introduce any other mystery text such as Sherlock Holmes or other Agatha Christie plays.

This works great for improv and drama classes or in-between-unit days for English classes. You could easily adapt this to an actual historical murder and give the students real suspects as part of a history lesson.

Want to hear more about this lesson?
***Check ou t my podcast interview with Betsy on The Now Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast*****

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How to Host a Classroom Murder Mystery - Engaging and Effective Teaching

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My murder mystery lesson is by far my students' favorite - and for good reason! They get to be a part of the story, walk around and engage with classmates, and compete to see who can solve the mystery first! Here's a link to my classroom mystery resources via TeachersPayTeachers, or read on to learn ...

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Teach  student how to mend a broken friendship

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Teach  student how to mend a broken friendship

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1. Reflect on the Situation:

Encourage students to reflect on the reasons behind the broken friendship. Understanding the root causes is crucial for finding solutions and preventing similar issues in the future.

2. Take Responsibility:

Teach students to take responsibility for their actions, if applicable. Acknowledging mistakes and showing genuine remorse is a key step in rebuilding trust.

3. Open Communication:

Stress the importance of open and honest communication. Encourage students to express their feelings, concerns, and desires in a calm and respectful manner. Active listening is equally crucial.

4. Choose the Right Time and Place:

Advise students to choose an appropriate time and private setting for the conversation. Avoid discussing sensitive issues in public, as it can add unnecessary stress.

5. Use "I" Statements:

Teach the use of "I" statements to express feelings without sounding accusatory. For example, saying "I felt hurt when..." rather than "You always..."

6. Apologize Sincerely:

If an apology is necessary, guide students on how to apologize sincerely. A genuine apology acknowledges the impact of one's actions and demonstrates a commitment to change.

7. Discuss Boundaries:

Help students establish clear boundaries for the friendship. Discuss expectations and ensure that both parties are comfortable with the terms moving forward.

8. Rebuild Trust Gradually:

Remind students that trust takes time to rebuild. Encourage patience and understanding as they work towards restoring the friendship. Small gestures of trustworthiness can go a long way.

9. Seek Mediation if Needed:

In more complex situations, suggest seeking mediation from a trusted teacher, counselor, or another impartial party. Mediation can provide a structured environment for resolving conflicts.

10. Learn and Grow Together:

Emphasize the opportunity for personal growth through challenges. Encourage students to learn from the experience and commit to making positive changes in their friendship.

11. Be Prepared for Different Outcomes:

Remind students that not all friendships can be mended. Some may evolve into different forms or may not be salvageable. Encourage acceptance of different outcomes.

12. Encourage Forgiveness:

Teach the importance of forgiveness, both for oneself and the other person. Forgiveness is a powerful tool for healing and moving forward.

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I’ve learned some valuable lessons about how to fix a broken friendship. These may work for you too, if you apply them wholeheartedly.