preview

Summary Of In A Public Classroom Meeting By Charney

Decent Essays

Charney’s (1992) article defines the importance of problem-solving techniques that can be utilized within the context of a public classroom meeting with students and the teacher. One important quote that I found interesting was based on the idea of cooperation and providing problem-solving skills for children to learn in a group setting: “In a class meeting, we are teaching (as well as exercising) vital skills in cooperation and problem solving. We will need to be patient and encouraging” (78). In the article, Charney (1992) defines the problem of cliques, secret sabotage, bullying, and infighting that many children endure, which can be exposed within the context of these classroom meetings. Teachers can challenge students to interactively …show more content…

When I was younger, I remember that a student’s lunch money had been stolen during recess, and the principle had to come into the classroom to find out who took the money. Certainly, this is very different that the class meeting proposed by Charney, but it illustrates how the school ‘s principle sat down with each student where they had been during recess. During this time, every single student in the classroom was present, which put pressure on the one student that was “late” to lunch/recess and found to be the culprit, as the individual was found to be holding the hungry student’s lunch money. This form of public “exposure” made it possible to expose the secrets of the student within the classroom environment, which created the same concept of an open forum in which bullies and troubled-students were exposed and taught a moral/ethical lesson about their wrongdoings. More so, it taught the rest of us in the classroom a moral lesson about theft/stealing as being wrong as a collective. Charney’s (1992) article is an extremely valuable way to understand the instructive influence of the “class meeting” as a way to expose wrongdoers and to also create a respectful and cooperative learning

Get Access