Bullying behaviors should always be interrupted and reported but we also need a clear process for conflict resolution. This requires a sincere apology, making amends, and forgiveness. Both the aggressor and the target should be willing to participate and take the process seriously. For the target. As a trusted adult, you can assure both individuals that, while the harm cannot be undone, this process will make your community stronger.
Lessons Learned
As a 5th grade teacher, I wanted my students to learn conflict resolution on their own. I knew that they could do it if I gave them the tools they needed. In the weeks before school started up, I created a ‘peace corner’ in my classroom– a space where students who felt harmed could cool down, reflect, request an apology, and give forgiveness. I even bought a bean-bag chair, a few plants, and a box full of stress balls. If someone hurts you, I instructed my students, take some time to cool down, then ask the classmate who harmed you to “talk it out together” in the peace corner using sentence frames:
- Student A- “When you did…it made me feel…”
- Student B- “I am sorry for…” Student A- “I heard you say you are sorry for…”
- Student B- “In the future, I will not…”
- Student A- “In the future could you please not do…
The magical peace corner freed up time for me to focus more of my energy on student learning, and the routine worked wonders. It promoted emotional regulation, self-expression, and conflict resolution. That is until it stopped working altogether. A simple apology worked for “small” harms like an unreturned pencil or an inadvertent push in the recess line. But when a student felt deeply hurt by an action, “I’m sorry for…” rarely achieved mutual resolution. Deeper hurt was only superficially resolved and their feelings became resentment, retaliation, sadness, shame. Old wounds would re-open at the slightest provocation, or new wounds would open before the old ones could heal. My transformative project, it seemed, had failed miserably. Looking back, it was naive of me to think that conflict resolution would be so simple. C.S Lewis wrote, “We all agree that forgiveness is a beautiful idea until we have to practice it.” My classroom’s conflict resolution toolkit was obviously missing a very important piece: making amends. It was time to press the reset button on the peace corner.
Beyond Apologies
The sentence frames above provide a strong foundation by encouraging students to fully hear one another, however, the true resolution only happens when the individual who caused harm shows empathy and compassion for the impact of their actions. Effective conflict resolution requires deeper levels of emotional intelligence that take time to internalize. The person we’ve harmed is allowed to ask us to make amends. Making amends means correcting our mistakes through actions that do not harm ourselves, them, or anyone else. As the person who hurt someone else, be it intentional or not, we need to know that a perfunctory “sorry” may not be enough to correct our mistake. Students can make amends by working together on a fun project, spending quality time together, or writing letters to one another.
Lessons for Conflict Resolution
1. It takes courage, humility, and compassion to seek and offer forgiveness. It is not an act of weakness. Share examples of forgiveness in literature and history that demonstrate how forgiveness of one’s enemies made an individual or a group stronger. 2. A true apology recognizes harm and humbly asks forgiveness, focusing on the harm caused, not the intent, with a goal to avoid making the same mistake again and a commitment to rebuilding trust. Making amends means rebuilding the trust to be stronger than before. Begin with compassion and empathy. 3. Discuss characters who have been hurt and examine how we think that person might feel. Explain that forgiveness requires us to understand how our actions affect others. Encourage students to ask the person they’ve harmed, “What would help?” 4. Suggest that students set compassionate boundaries for themselves. If they are repeatedly being harmed by one person, let them know that it could be acceptable not to choose this person as their close friend, as long as they are not excluding this person in order to cause harm. 5. Apologies, amends, and forgiveness aside, the process of healing from trauma is left to the person who experienced it. Apologies and amends might make you feel better but the act of healing is, in the end, up to you. This is where seeking support from others – a counselor, family member, or trusted friend- becomes important. Healing takes time but you will be stronger because of it. Key Words: Empathy, Forgiveness, Apology, Impact, Healing, Harm, Intent, Personal Boundaries, Making Amends, Humility, Compassion.
The Philosophy of Kintsukuroi
Kintsukuroi (n.) (v. phr.) – “to repair with gold”; the art of repairing pottery with gold or silver lacquer and understanding that the piece is more beautiful for having been broken. This philosophy comes from Japanese artistry and provides a great metaphor for forgiveness. Kintsukuroi or Kintsugi (“golden repair”) is the ancient tradition of adding gold or silver to broken pottery with the philosophy that an item’s imperfections are part of its story, not something to be hidden or disguised. 