(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Problem solving by any other name is Conflict resolution [1] ['Alan Kandel', 'Aashirs Nani', 'Rob In Vermont', 'News Corpse'] Date: 2026-10-01 Just to provide background, I founded a Problem-solving Group on DK. No members yet besides yours truly but it’s still early. I’m hopeful. In this diary I talk about my earliest real problem-solving case that I have knowledge of. I provide background first and then explain how the problem got solved. It actually resolved itself. The truth is it took some time before tempers simmered down with hard feelings all but disappearing. This all occurred when I was in junior high school. It started with the ignorant, and I do mean ignorant, physical education teacher and this person’s approach regarding implementation of disciplinary procedures in addressing student misbehavior. This particular teach thought it a good idea to just yell out the misbehaving student’s name or students’ names (if there were more than one in the case of the latter). That in essence was a command (code for) the remaining students in the class to run, jump and pile on top of the one named student or students if there were more than one named. The tactic at first appeared to be effective until it wasn’t. So, I’ll never forget the time that our PE class was left unsupervised. That on its own presented huge challenges. It basically amounted to students in class policing themselves. Or, in other words, it was self-supervising on the parts of students. Not a good idea because for whatever reason another student in the class yelled my name out of the blue and before I knew what hit me, I was at the bottom of a mountain consisting of the rest of the remaing students. Having a small frame didn’t help. It’s tantamount to adding injury to insult. My answer was to go to the head office and report the incident. And, it wasn’t like this was the first time I found myself in harm’s way in PE class in junior high. While under the supervision of a substitute teacher I received a blow to my head and got a concussion as a result of it. I had to be transported to a local hospital by ambulance. I documented that account here at DK, the title of that diary being something to the effect of “I told my junior high school principal to go to H***, but didn’t mean to”. At any rate, after I reported the piling-on incident, I learned that the student who was at the center of it, got suspended. But that wasn’t the end of it. I got threats from the younger brother because he knew I was the person who “squealed” on his older sibling. Which seemed to only make matters worse. How this all finally got resolved was that time passed and we (meaning all the PE students in question) just moved on, meaning we went on with our lives as if the name-calling-prompting-piling-on-me caper never even happened. As for the problem resolving itself, well, not quite. I’m sure the school administration probably had a nice long talk with the PE teacher in question, and it was probably suggested to this person to find a better way to discipline misbehaving class students. I know it was a long time ago (I’m now 73), but come to think of it, I don’t think there was any misbehaving on the parts of any of the students in the class from that time forward. Furthermore, any hostilities that may have existed between myself and the student who yelled out my name, vaporized. All I can say is I’m thankful things didn’t escalate. The two of us were able to work out our differences without us resorting to engaging in a physical altercation. I call that a win! [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2026/10/1/800106405/community/problem-solving-by-any-other-name-is-conflict-resolution/ Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/