Teachers Guide - Operation Respect

INTRODUCTION
Don’t Laugh at Me
The goal of Don’t Laugh at Me is to support you in creating a caring, compassionate, and
cooperative classroom and school environment. Since children learn by doing, this guide
focuses on giving children the experience of learning in a caring community—a classroom
characterized by:
• a healthy expression of feelings
• caring, compassion, and cooperation
• the creative resolution of conflicts
• an appreciation of differences
Don’t Laugh at Me addresses issues of the heart, as well as the mind. Through the song, CD, and
video, the project harnesses the power of music and art to transform, inspire, and build skills in
students. The activities in this guide are designed to raise awareness, explore feelings, connect
children to their inner selves and one another, provide important tools for you as a teacher,
fulfill curriculum standards, and build essential skills. Additionally, these activities will help you
to empower your students to become important catalysts for change in your school and
community, so that the circle of caring widens and an increasing number of children can share
in the experience of a caring community.
The Project’s Scope and Pedagogy
The Don’t Laugh at Me project is the result of a rich collaboration among leading organizations
working in the fields of character education, conflict resolution, and diversity education,
including Educators for Social Responsibility (ESR) and its Resolving Conflict Creatively
Program, the Southern Poverty Law Center and Teaching Tolerance, the McGraw-Hill
Companies, the Character Education Partnership, CharacterPlus, the Center for Advancement of
Ethics and Character at Boston University, and Challenge Day. The activities in this guide are
drawn primarily from Educators for Social Responsibility’s programs, including the Resolving
Conflict Creatively Program (RCCP) and Adventures in Peacemaking (AIP), with important
contributions from all of the project’s partners.
ESR works to make teaching social responsibility a core practice in education so that young
people develop the convictions and skills to shape a safe, sustainable, democratic, and just
world. AIP is a widely-recognized afterschool and early childhood program. RCCP is one of the
nation’s leading school-based conflict resolution programs. Results of a recently completed
evaluation of RCCP released by the National Center for Children in Poverty, School of Public
Health at Columbia University, provide concrete evidence of the program’s effectiveness in
teaching students competent strategies for resolving conflict and reducing violence.
Furthermore, the study shows that taking time for the development of social and emotional
competencies through direct skill instruction not only benefits students socially, but also
improves academic performance on standardized reading and math tests.
The results of this study confirm what many educators know from their experience working
with children. It is possible to create a more just, caring, and safe way of being in the world for
our children. But changing the culture of your classroom and school will take time, patience,
support, and sustained efforts. Hopefully, the activities offered here will provide a bridge to
integrating social, emotional, and ethical development instruction on an ongoing basis in your
classroom practice and across your curriculum. Towards this end, throughout this guide we
offer you suggestions on extending Don’t Laugh at Me through the best curricula, programs, and
training available.
Introduction © 2000 Operation Respect, Inc. and Educators for Social Responsibility 9