My Counselor Hat

There was a lot of drama at the school today. It was bizarre. I was thinking to myself, "What the hell is going on today?" Anyway, I'll tell you the first case. I have two other cases to talk about this one, but I'll save those for later.

Today, while I was monitoring the play structure on the upperyard, about four students from my class came to me and told me how one student is not treating his best friend fairly and hasn't been treating him fairly for a long time. We'll call one student K and the other student D. The four students from the class that I student teach in were claiming that D bosses K around all the time. They were claiming that D always tells K to do stuff for D. I was a little concerned about it, so I wanted to talk to K. I called K from the other side of the playground.

He comes running over:

K: Yea?

Me: So, I want to talk about you and D.

K: Yea... I know what you are going to say.

Me: Ok. What was I going to say?

K: You were gonna tell me how to D treats me like a dog.

Me: Well, I wasn't gonna say that. But, does D tell you to do things?

K: Yea.

Me: Do you always do what he tells you to do?

K: Yea.

Me: How long has this been going on for?

K: Since 1st grade (he's in 3rd grade now)

Me: Do you think that's fair?

K: No.

Me: What would happen if you stopped doing things for D?

K: He wouldn't be my friend anymore.

Me: Listen. I know that you and D are really good friends.

K: Yea... *starts to cry*

Me: But, if you had a friend who always made you do everything, would you stay friends with him?

K: No.

Me: Now, do you think your friendship would be better with him if you were treated equally or unequally?

K: Equally.

Me: So, I think what would be fair is that instead of you doing everything, he does things for you as much as you do things for him. Does that make sense?

K: Yea.

Me: Do you want me to talk to D about this?

K: Yea.

Me: Ok. Thanks for talking to me about this K. (Pat him on the back to be on his way)

* 10 minutes later *

D approaches me.

D: Hey. So, K told me what you guys talked about.

Me: What'd we talk about?

D: How K always does things for me. He told me how I should start doing things for him too.

Me: What do you think about that?

D: I agree.

Me: Why haven't you guys done that before?

D: He never told me.

Me: Ok cool.Well, I'm glad you guys agreed on that.

D: Alright well, I'll see you tomorrow, Mr. Auto.

Me: Alright. See you tomorrow.

Yup.... I think I did a good job today. :-)