One of the things I observed in the classroom was a conflict resolution amongst three students. After the students have their Bahasa Malay class, they return to their classroom to put away their stuff before lining up to go downstairs for their break. As I was asking them to line up, one of the girls came up to me and told me **a **e wanted to punch her, so I told her that I will bring it up to my mentor. Once all the kids were settled in their lines for break, I brought up this matter to my mentor and learned that two other kids were involved. At the end of the day, my mentor pulled the students involved to try to understand what had happened. After having each student explain what had happened, my mentor finished it off by asking them how they felt during the incident and a warning to be careful next time. The students were all fine afterwards and then went home.

During the situation I felt a little bit fearful because I didn't know if I would be able to solve the situation because I did not have much experience, so I brought up this issue to my mentor to see how she would solve it. I was also definitely surprised, because this was the first time a conflict happened in the classroom. When my mentor had a chat with the students involved, I stayed behind to see how my mentor managed the situation. How she dealt with the situation amazed me. She took a very gentle approach and asked each student for their side of the story before ending the conversation and besides one of the emotional kids, the rest walked perfectly fine and there was no more conflict after that.

What was good about this situation is that I was able to see a method of how to deal with conflict in the classroom. As my mentor had pointed out, there will always be conflict in the classroom. Conflicts can arise in many different ways. It can be between students, student and teacher, or even class and teacher and the cause of this is generally because of the diversity amongst the classroom, a student's emotional issues, or even a pressure to succeed (Morrissette, 2001). Based on my experience in this situation, the main cause of the conflict is because of difference in personality, as well as their lack of experience on how to mange their feelings and actions. These students have just started going back to school and are finaly interacting with others of similar age, so they are not used to each other. What was bad about the situation is definitely how the kids are unable to get along with each other and even resorted to such strong feelings of dislike. One of the things that went well with the situation is that my mentor didn't confront the situation immediately. She could've asked the students what happend right then and there because there was plenty of time to have the discussion because it was break time, but instead she held it off to the end of the school day. This phenomenon of not dealing with the stiuation immediately, but instead taking some time to confront it is called a cooling off period and it is an "effective tool for putting some space [between two people] when emotions run high" (Nelsen, 1996). By adopting a cooling off period, my mentor is allowing the parties involved to readjust their emotions so that they can begin to form constructive solutions to the problem at hand, which would also avoid a communication breakdown between the parties involved so they can have a discussion about it. (Frazier, 2002). My mentor was then able to extract each students' side of the story on what had happened and was able to paint a picture of what happened. I think this also went well because my mentor discouraged the students involved from interrupting each others' stories, so everybody felt heard, and was able to repeat to them the situation that had unfolded. When my mentor took this approach, she was actually adopting an active-listening strategy with the students. She listened very closely to what the students had said, and then repeated it back so the students could see that my mentor had understood what had happened, which creates a form of trust in the teacher (Managing Classroom Conflict, 2004 as cited in Lescher, 2020). With that, my mentor was able to open up a dialogue with the students to tackle the situation. Insteado of the typical "he said, she said" sort of explanation, my mentor had them explain how they felt with each other during the conflict itself. My mentor is a big believer in having the students verbally express how they feel with one another and I think this was a great approach because it builds empathy with the students. Sometimes, the students are unaware of how others are feeling; this can be contributed to Piaget's theories of cognitive development. These students are in Year 3 and their age level is around 7-9 years old and according to Piaget, kids at this age have just passed their egocentric phase and are just now being able to apply logic and think rationally (Malike & Marwaha, 2021). Therefore, it's only natural that conflicts between students happen because they generally do not understand each other. I think employing empathy and having students express how they feel with each other can let them see why they reacted so grandly with each other, so next time they can figure out a way to avoid encountering such situation again.

What I learned from this experience is that conflict is normal, but handling conflict is definitely one of the challenging things to undertake in the classroom. Throughout this experience, I was able to see how conflicts can arise as well as learn some effective ways to manage such difficult situation. My first instinct should not be to panic nor be overwhelemed. Instead, it is okay to take my time to think about the situation and plan accordingly, as long as it is settled within the day itself. This cool off period will help the students to think rationally about what has happened and allow them to express their thoughts and emotions more coherently, as well as allow me to create a plan of action to tackle the situation and manage my emotion. This experience has let me know that a skill that I require in my future teaching practice is to manage my emotions, because if I am not able to manage my own emotions, how can I do so with the students. I also learned that I should have the kids express how their feeling with each other, as this can help to deter further incidents and build understanding with one another. Next time, when I encounter a situation like this, I will reassure the student who came up to me, tackle the situation after I have given the parties involved sufficent time to cool down, practice active listening, encourage the students to explain how they feel. If the situation doesn't resolve itself immediately, I can even consult with others, as they may have more experience than me and conduct a whole class discussion if it persists.