I believe that most of the strategies I have used in my classroom relate to self-awareness, social awareness, and responsible decision-making. Recently, I have also started to introduce self-management more intentionally.

In the past, I had several students who had experienced civil war and developed strong ethnic bias. To be fair, their feelings did not come from nowhere. They had personally experienced violence and cruelty, and they carried that pain and hatred with them.

I began by focusing on self-awareness. I helped students recognize and understand their own emotions especially anger, fear, and hatred. Once they became more aware of their feelings, I introduced self-management. I explained clearly that if we continue to hold onto hatred and spread it, the cycle of conflict will never end.

I told them directly: I understand what you have experienced. It is terrible, and you did not deserve it. But now you are here, in a safe place, with a chance to learn. This means you must learn to manage yourself. No one can harm you here, and you cannot harm others either. Everyone is responsible for controlling their own behavior and thinking. This is how we build trust and peace in our school by managing ourselves and caring for one another.

We also studied and presented different ethnic histories and experiences. This helped students see a hard truth that war does not harm only one group. It harms all civilians, and in the end, everyone is a victim.

This was not a one time lesson. We reinforced these ideas consistently throughout the year. Over time, I noticed real change. By the end of the academic year, many students had become more open-minded and showed less rigid ethnic bias.