Blog Posts #15 and #16

 This chapter contained a lot of information based on relationships with others and moral development. This chapter focused on compassion for others, which begins in early infancy. Compassion consists of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors of others. Along with learning compassion for others, it explains that children express-communicate differently through touching their wants/needs, use of words, and sign language. On page 404, provides a good visual representation to understand the Stages of Social Perspective Taking development. The chapter goes on to continue discussing building relationships with peers, which is important because it provides children with social interaction and practicing their skills. An important thing to remember is to eliminate prejudice, this is not usually evident in the early grades, but it is important to explore diversity in the classroom through children's books and literature and in-class assignments (i.e. history class with Black History Month, etc.). Another activity that teachers could incorporate is having students share their background with the class, as an icebreaker activity for the first week of school. 

Peer relations are important; they help one another learn through "modeling academic skills, assisting in problem solving, serving as a resource, and providing encouragement and support" (Meece, p. 412). Students tend to learn best from their peers because they are able to put it into simpler terms for one to understand. As a student, I would agree with this because I feel that I gain a better understanding when I am able to talk with someone to exchange information or learn from their responses; it is nice to get a different view of a situation. As a future educator, it is important to remember to promote positive relations. Fortunately for myself, I would like to teach in the elementary school level, so cliques and the different types of crowds aren't an issue viruses middle-high school ages students. However, I thought figure and table 7.1 on pages 416-417 in our textbook was helpful and yet so true. On page 418, Meece states "Many young people report that the best part of school is spending time with their friends." I would definitely agree with this statement, I found lunch was one of the best periods of the day because I got to sit and talk with my friends and I remember thinking that college was great because you were able to choose your own schedule and you could pick with your friends :)

Many concepts in the middle of this chapter deal with middle-high school aged students. It is important to eliminate bullying to avoid behavior-aggressive behavior. Bullying happens even in elementary school, so as a teacher, one needs to ensure that bullying is eliminated and monitoring in case it does come across. If a teacher faces a student who has aggression issues, the teacher needs to promote other school efforts to reduce behavior and promote social relations with peers.

I found the last part of the chapter, moral development, very intriguing. Children and adults are faced with moral issues almost everyday. An excellent example that the book provided was the Heinz's dilemma. Children face issues of whether or not too cheat on assessments, copy a peer's homework, etc. Teachers need to ensure that they are monitoring their students and performance during assessments by walking around the room, which can eliminate the potential to cheat. Kohlberg's Stages of Moral Reasoning were interesting; the 6 stages and 3 levels. One concept that was discussed in this section was Ethic of Care = IMPORTANT!!! Teachers need to have ethic of care for her students so that it creates a positive learning environment and builds a relationship with students. Lastly is character education, "an approach to moral development that involves teaching young people core values and virtues (Meece, p. 439), which is something that I'd like to introduce to my students. It promotes building on their character and makes them really think about a situation.