The past few days have honestly been a blur. Thursday afternoon and Friday at school were hard days for my kids. They have been at each other’s necks like crazy lately. It’s that time of the year that they are so used to one another that they are fighting like siblings and I don’t know what to do!

Thursday afternoon I had to have a class intervention on how to be nice to each other. We watched the Class Dojo Empathy videos where Mojo gets so anxious he takes his emotions out on his friends. He learns that everyone is going through something and that when you are upset or frustrated with another person, you need to take a deep breath and walk in that person’s shoes.

After we watched the 3 different videos, we had a long class discussion on what we learned and how it relates to us. During the lesson, they were all super attentive and understanding. I had some brave kiddos who shared some personal examples on when they’ve had bad days and took it out on someone else. I honestly thought it was a success!

Friday, however they came in to the room and I heard 3 different arguments in 10 minutes. One of my pet peeves is whining and snapping at others. I don’t know what happened but they came in and got very annoyed with each other very quick and I heard a lot of whining and a lot of snapping. We had to start our Friday morning meeting with a reflection on our discussion the day before and brainstormed ways to make the day better.

For the most part this worked but when they came in from recess, I heard many stories about how “so and so pushed me,” or “so and so looked at me funny and then ran away from me.” I needed them all to stay away from each other so we did some independent work and reading during the afternoon. I tried a team bonding activity where they met with other classmates to share facts about themselves but that didn’t work either.

I had to pull the class together again to talk about how we’re a big family and like any family, we won’t always get along. We talked about how no matter if you like someone or not, we’re stuck together for another 5 months and we need to learn to get along like we have to with our siblings.

To say the least, I was glad when the bell rang and the long weekend began. We have school off tomorrow and I’m really hoping that having 3 days off will be a good refresher so we can come back on Tuesday and focus more on school and not little arguments about funny looks and who sat by who at the lunch table.

If anyone has any ideas on how to get through this January slump, I’m open to any and all suggestions!