Children make the rules at this school

04-07-2010

By Emily Alpert/Voice of San Diego

The meeting came to order. Wriggling second graders gathered into a circle on the rug, jostling and toying with each others' hair. Scrawled in a child's handwriting on the agenda: "Smelt it delt it." One boy earnestly explained to classmates that he didn't like when people joked, "You smelt it, you dealt it!" after he smelled something bad. "It makes me feel embarrassed," he told his classmates. "And I didn't really do it." So his classmates weighed the matter. One boy scoffed that the saying was just a joke. Another said it hurt his feelings, too. The second graders voted to set a simple rule: Just don't say it. Their teacher, Erica Diamond, sat alongside them, offering suggestions but never overruling them. (more...)

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Children make the rules at this school

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