Creating a Classroom Community?

This morning on the Today Show, we saw a very disturbing piece on a classroom in Florida. From within this class, a six year old girl with a peanut allergy is at the center of a controversy over student rights. Some parents of the children in this class are up in arms because they feel their children's rights are being stepped on in order to accommodate a little girl with a deadly peanut allergy. Students are being asked to wash their hands several times a day and wash their mouths after lunch. Is this really such a huge imposition to ensure a little girls safety? Also, the children are not allowed to bring snacks and food into the classroom that have nuts in them or were produced in a plant where nuts are handled. Again, are there not at least 100 different snack options for children that do not involve nuts?

Parents complaints are that their child's education time is being used to wash hands and faces. Isn't this something we should be doing multiple times a day to prevent illness anyway? One parent added the time spent on this task to be 30 minutes a day, 2 1/2 hours a week and 80 hours per school year. While this may seem like a lot, it truly is not anything different than any other classroom in America. If teachers did not take time to ask children to wash their hands after restroom breaks, lunch and recess, the children would be missing a whole lot more school because they have caught a virus. While we think this is an extremely petty issue for parents to take up by picketing, we think the worst injustice is the message they are sending to their own children.

By refusing to send their kids to school, by picketing outside of the school, and essentially ostracizing this poor little girl, these parents are teaching their children intolerance. Because someone is more fragile, or needs more help, or can't be sure they can stay alive without the help an cooperation of her classmates, that someone should not be allowed to be in your classroom. Is this the message we want to send to our children?

We hope in our classroom, we can create a sense of community among the students. We want to instill the idea that we need to help each other, look out for each other, and care about each other. Not only does this help to create an environment that is conducive to learning, but it also helps to mold compassionate human beings.

Just food for thought.