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TEACHERS.NET GAZETTE
Volume 3 Number 7

COVER STORY
Barbara & Sue Gruber help us "to stay energized and enthusiastic about teaching" during our summer break...
ARTICLES
Five Reasons to Stop Saying "Good Job!" by Alfie Kohn
Prepare for Discouragement? by Hg
Using The Summer To Improve Your Teaching by Bill Page
What I Know I Know by Bill Page
Consistency in Congress: Yet Another Child On-line Protection Law that Can't Possibly Work by Dr. Rob Reilly
Simple Tips to Increase Student Achievement at the High School Level by Geneva Glanzer
Dear Old Golden Rule Days, Chapter 1 - First Test by Janet Farquhar
Classroom Management Tips You Wish You'd Known "Back Then" from the Primary Elementary Chatboard
Teaching for Peace by Jay Davidson
Book Reviews - The "Power" of Two & Brain Based Teaching: Building Excitement for Learning by Susan Gingras Fitzell
Classrooms as Discourse Communities by Daniel Chang
Keeping Records on Students with IEP's from the Special Education Teachers' Chatboard
The Robinson Residence for Retired Teachers In Quebec by Dave Melanson
What To Do With Education Catalogs Instead of Tossing Them from: The Teachers.Net Chatboard
Uncovering the Hidden Web, Part I: Finding What the Search Engines Don't from: ERIC Clearinghouse
July Columns
July Regular Features
July Informational Items
Gazette Home Delivery:


About Jay Davidson...
Jay Davidson has been teaching in San Francisco since 1969; he teaches first grade. He is the author of Teach Your Children Well: A Teacher's Advice for Parents, which is available for $12.95 at Amazon.com.

He can be reached through his Web site at www.jaydavidson.com.
His column appears Thursdays in the Daily News.

Email: teacher@jaydavidson.com.


Best Sellers

Teach Your Children Well: A Teacher's Advice for Parents
by Jay Davidson

$12.95 from Amazon.com
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Teacher Feature...

Teaching for Peace

by Jay Davidson


A reader recently wrote to me. He explained, "I am a 77-year old veteran from chasing German troops across southern Germany at the end of WW II. I do not believe war is the answer. It is difficult to be a peacemaker, function with integrity, and express little support for military action. How can this position be explained to children?"

Peace is an admirable concept to teach to children. But that does not mean that it is an easy one.

The very youngest learners are operating in a world where they understand only concrete examples; they don't grasp abstractions. As a general guideline, I can offer the following suggestions:

  • We accept the various languages and cultures that surround us. The sounds of other languages may be alien to us, but we respect other people by not laughing at them or their words. Each month, I teach my students how to say "good morning," "hello," "thank you," and how to count in a language that comes from one of the families of students in my class. When they first hear some of these words, sometimes they laugh. But I explain that it is not polite to laugh at other people's languages.
  • We include people from different cultures in our lives. Only by knowing them can we understand them. And when we understand them, the line between "us" and "them" begins to disappear, because we realize that we are all "us".
  • We talk of our personal heroes and heroines who struggled against the masses to wage peace. Whether they are Gandhi, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., or Peace Pilgrim, if we can tell our children why they were important to us, we can impart their values to our youngsters.
  • We tell stories. In The Big Book for Peace, edited by Ann Durrell and Marilyn Sachs, there are more than a dozen poems and tales that parents and teachers can read to children to elicit their understanding of what it means to engage in peaceful relationships with others. The stories become the grounds for discussions with adults about the differences between peace and war, getting along and fighting, cooperating and competing.


Visit www.jaydavidson.com for more information about Jay Davidson.
 

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