Classrooms often become competitive environments with winners and losers. This is especially true in the typical Haitian classroom, where students not only receive grades but, beginning in first grade, are also ranked from first to last in their class. Great honor goes to the first in the class, and great shame goes to those at the bottom.

One aim of the Reflection Circle project is to promote justice and sharing in the classroom. Reflection Circles are weekly textbased classroom discussions where students learn to reflect together cooperatively and respectfully. The class may evaluate its performance as a whole, but individual students are not graded. Often the students who are best at pleasing their teachers find themselves bewildered in the uncharted waters of an open discussion. Likewise, students who may be poor at conforming or performing in traditional classes often excel during these discussions. Authoritarian teachers also benefit by discovering how all their students have important contributions to make in the search for understanding.

Here’s what teachers at one school in Port-au-Prince wrote in February when evaluating the impact of Reflection Circles in their classrooms: