When we were asked to write a piece about what was happening in the Lower Elementary classroom, we thought about all the exciting things we have been studying: Asia, applying math in our everyday lives, research for our Project/Science Fair, improving our reading and spelling, and many other ongoing projects. What struck us as most important, though, was how we approach our classroom experience. These fundamental tenets in our classroom guides our daily lives: Respect yourself, respect others, and respect the environment. All of these must be in place before the children can feel safe and free enough to, as we ask them, "do their best work" and share their work with others.

We strongly believe in and support peaceful community building in the Lower Elementary classroom. From reading books about how to treat friends or what is a bully to what to do if you have a bad day, we choose books that are geared to their level and give plenty of food for conversation. In addition to our Friday community building meeting, we spontaneously meet as needed to discuss conflicts and talk about how our classroom is working. We role model appropriate behavior (or inappropriate behavior if that is the topic!), work on how to use "I" statements, and address points of friction. If there are areas of difficulty that affect the whole group, such as use of the class fort in the playground, disagreement about soccer rules, or how classroom jobs are being performed, we take time out from our day to make sure everyone is heard.

When individual conflicts inevitably arise, we encourage the children to meet one-on-one in the peace area. Using skills that the children have been practicing since Children's House, they speak one at a time, telling how the other child's actions made them feel. Maybe they discover that there has been a misunderstanding, or that they actually were behaving badly and apologize. A simple "I'm sorry," without discussion, is not the goal. The end result again is to make sure that each child feels heard and respected, to achieve a "win-win" situation, where both children are happy with the outcome.

To illustrate how we treat one another, we use two jars in the classroom-one for put-ups and one for put-downs. If a child receives a compliment, they place a decorative eraser in the put-up jar. If they feel that someone acted unkindly toward them, the put-down  jar gets the eraser. Periodically, we count which jar has the most erasers. Although we hope that the put-up jar contains far more than the put-downs jar, that is not always the case and opens opportunity for discussion about how we are treating one another. As one second-year boy said, "You have to be nice and careful what you say. If you had a put-down and grabbed an eraser from the box, don't just throw it into the put-down box! You put it in there gently."

The children say it best: "Your community gets larger by friendship" (second-year boy).

"One time I got in a fight and we resolved it with the I statement in the peace area, but it took a long time to resolve it-a really, really long time" (first-year girl).

"Community building to me helps me build a bigger friendship with people I'm not very close with. It also lets me really relax and know we have a good community in our class and that we can help each other" (third-year girl).

"I think community building is making a perfect community, for instance I think it goes like this-being is care from other people and being in circle" (first-year boy).

-- Jean Anderson and Adrian Riseborough, Lower El teachers