My crinkled heart

Ask me about my crinkled heart I made at school

This is a representative activity and students are learning to explain about how one thing represents something else.  (very important in math!) It just happened to come up that someone got hurt in our room and we launched into quite a discussion about how that feels and how we connect our Rights with Responsibilities, and Benefits when we think about following safety rules, being kind, apologizing and problem solving.  We had some embedded symmetry, visualization for folding and getting those hearts cut.  We printed from a class created template. 

We really needed a reminder that "an apology does not take a hurt away" so the analogy is the nice beautiful heart on white paper that gets crinkled, cannot flatten right out again no matter how hard we press it out.  That is much like an apology when someone feels hurt. 

We talked about what an apology sounds like and what needs to be included or NOT included.  We linked:

Right - to be safe and feel safe at school
Responsibility - for all of us to follow safety rules and expectations
Benefit - when we follow rules and expectations we have many opportunities and choices within the learning community (when we do not follow rules and stay safe, trust is broken, it takes time to earn it back, and we lose some of our choices for a time)

Our conversations included the time it takes for someone to trust us again, the hard work that goes into making amends following an apology and that an apology does not blame or hold the other person accountable for how we feel about the situation, rather it comes from our heart and includes an acknowledgement that we were wrong, we're sorry and we'll try not to do that again - the amend and building trust is the thinking and hard work that follows.

We needed to then cover the importance of apologizing sincerely and knowing that sometimes time needs to pass, but that we don't buy people's forgiveness or favor with money or gifts - that is not part of an apology to a friend at school. 

Most importantly we discussed the importance of forgiveness, moving on and knowing that we all make mistakes and that this is a safe place to make mistakes, where you will still be loved and accepted and will still have friends and adults who care for you.   It was a busy day!