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Show Southeast School Teachers Involved In Learning to Do the Right Thing Anna Freud wrote, "Whatever "What-ever we embark on with a child, whether to teach it arithmetic or geography, whether whe-ther intending to educate or analyze, we must always first establish a very definite emotional relationship with it. The harder the work to be done, the higher must be the strain-capacity of this attachment." attach-ment." For the past five or six weeks teachers at Southeast Elementary have been doing something about trying to increase the strain capacity and review and re-sharpen their instincts for doing the right thing at the right time. Bob Greenberg, the Educational Educa-tional Consultant with the Four Corners Mental Health Center, has been conducting a scries of Monday afternoon workshops using Video tapes and role playing to improve the teachers' skill in Decoding: "What does Johnny mean by that?" (He just stacked some kid in the corner.), and Defusing: "What do I do about it?" (Short of stacking him alongside the other one.) While this is somewhat tongue-in-check, what actually happens in the classroom is much more subtle and oftentimes often-times more serious. It is extremely important that the adult in the lives of young people are on a fairly even keel and can handle their own problems as well as those of others. Children learn as much by example as they do any other way. If the adult over-reacts, the child is apt to over-react and never learn to cope with situations and be responsible for his own behavior. If we accept the fact that all behavior is caused, then we must also accept the responsibility responsi-bility for not causing further damage to the individual child carrying too big a burden, by adding to his problems. We may never completely understand, under-stand, but we can act with compassion and sympathy. From the comments generated genera-ted by a very brief questionnaire question-naire given to the teachers, the overwhelming response to the workshops has been very positive. Bob Greenberg stated that he was going to paint them all over the outside of his car to use as advertising. The Southeast Elementary staff would heartily recommend recom-mend this series of tapes or a modification of them to interested inter-ested adult groups or individuals indivi-duals who would like to get together to better their understanding under-standing of dealing with problem kids and problem situations. ! 1 i ' . . 1 "" f" ' 1 Bob Greenberg, educational consultant with Four Corners Mental Health, discusses ways of dealing with problem behaviors in children during afternoon workshop Monday. On the blackboard behind him is a diagram illustrating the conflict cycle. |