Solving Friendship Problems:
A Teacher's Toolkit

In the academic setting, friendship and other social issues interfere with students' abilities to learn. Children feel left out, rejected, and are the victims of teasing, gossiping, and bullying. Other students lack the skills to make friends, keep friends, and at times fall to peer pressure. Often, these issues make it difficult for students to learn in the classroom and some students feel that their school is an unsafe place to learn. This course will offer educators strategies for helping students with essential friendship-building skills that kids need to find, make, and keep friends, as well as how to survive social pressures from peers. This course will also focus on the following issues: Why friendships are so important to children; Why friendship problems are so much more prevalent than in the past; How technological advances have affected the social lives of children; Steps parents and teachers alike can take in order to improve friendship skills; and What 25 of the most common friendship problems are, and how we can help students learn to deal with them within the classroom setting.