Peace cadre was an initiative by the school to deal with behavioral issues and create an enjoyable working environment for students. As a part of this initiative I was assigned to the grade 7 classes where my goal was to be an approachable person for people facing issues and doing my best to resolve those issues. 

Lo 1:

My strength was that I was able to put myself as an approachable and friendly person. Due to this even students that were shy, were willing to come forward and talk to me about the issues that they faced. During this my communication skills also improved as in the beginning I wasn’t able to communicate with the students very well, but as time passed I was able to understand how I could talk to the students in a way that they would understand me and it would have a real impact on them. One of my weaknesses was also that I was not able to allocate enough time to go to their wing and talk to each of them. I improved on this by using my free slots along with my break times when necessary.

Lo 2:

One of the biggest issues I faced was that some of the kids did not take this initiative seriously. One of the students who I had received multiple complaints of did not listen to any of my instructions and because we were not allowed to take any disciplinary action such as giving them detention, some other students decided to ignore our instructions as well. Another challenge was getting the students to open up to us as students who approached us were called nicknames such as tattletales which discouraged other students to approach us. To overcome these challenges I had to develop my communication skills a lot as I needed the students to understand that standing up for themselves was not wrong and I also had to convince the trouble makers of the repercussions of their actions. 

Lo 3:

This was a student led event as the teachers only assigned us the grade we were to supervise. We had to devise strategies that we were going to use and implement them. To help better organize this we had assigned student leaders of each class and their role was to report issues to us. This made the entire process much easier as I did not have to talk to every student which saved a lot of time and it also allowed some students who wanted to report issues but wanted to stay anonymous which allowed more of them to come forward.This was an important experience as it allowed me to understand how to delegate roles and be a better leader.

Lo 4:

During this experience perseverance was necessary. This is because this task lasted over a year. I had to ensure that i regularly went to visit the classes as otherwise the reports would just pile up and the students would not take this initiative seriously. There were times that I didn’t visit for a few days on which I was supposed to due to other tasks but in the end I pushed myself to ensure that I would not miss any other days.

Lo 5:

Working in a group was not a big challenge for me as the people as I had regularly been a part of other groups such as in monsoon musing. As I had good communication with the members of my group I was able to get regular updates on the issues that were resolved and this would not have been possible with working in a group.

Lo 6:

The issues were good health and well-being. This is because bullying in any form can not only cause physical harm but can affect the mental health of students as well. To ensure that a healthy environment is being created, mental health is a very important factor which has to be considered and this is overlooked many times by people who think that it’s not a big deal which is wrong.

Lo 7:

It was extremely important that I remained ethical throughout this experience. To remain ethical I had to ensure that I wasn’t biased towards the students I knew or the ones I didn’t know and treated all reports equally.