{"id":330,"date":"2016-08-14T05:59:55","date_gmt":"2016-08-14T05:59:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.sibo.co.za\/?p=330"},"modified":"2016-08-14T05:59:55","modified_gmt":"2016-08-14T05:59:55","slug":"the-friendship-bench","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.sibo.co.za\/index.php\/2016\/08\/14\/the-friendship-bench\/","title":{"rendered":"The friendship bench"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Sibo<\/a><\/p>\n

A few weeks ago I read a very interesting story about a school overseas that has something called \u201cfriendship benches\u201d.\u00a0 Apparently it started out with just one of the lower grades having a bench but then it spread to the whole school and they ended up having several.<\/p>\n

I thought the whole idea was seriously cool.<\/p>\n

Most of us know what it\u2019s like to go to school and not have any friends. Whether you are new at that particular school or maybe you only have one special friend and they are not there for whatever reason. It\u2019s okay during classes, because you are listening to the teacher and doing your work, so you don\u2019t really have time to feel lonely or misplaced. But it\u2019s a really horrible feeling to be all alone and not know what to do with yourself during break time or lunch time.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s even worse when you have to watch everybody else is running around, chatting and generally having fun.<\/p>\n

Imagine having a bench \u2013 where you would feel comfortable to go and sit if you are feeling alone and sad, wishing badly you had somebody to talk to.<\/p>\n

Everybody else would know that\u2019s the friendship bench and they would make an effort to come and chat to you, or even just sit with you so that you don\u2019t feel so sad and alone.<\/p>\n

Maybe it would work even better if a rotation of kids (who had volunteered for the job) were assigned to keeping an eye on the bench to see if anybody was sitting there. I mean, it would not be very useful if everybody thought somebody else would take up the challenge and then nobody actually did it \u2013 would it? Then the poor person sitting on the bench would feel even worse.<\/p>\n

Often people are shy \u2013 and they come across as being full of nonsense, or stuck up or snotty which really isn\u2019t the case at all. They are just really shy.<\/p>\n

After all \u2013 a stranger is just a friend you have not yet met!<\/p>\n

Of course \u2013 this does not mean that you should go and sit next to strangers and start chatting to them in public spaces \u2013 especially adults. That\u2019s not a very clever thing to do. But in a school environment \u2013 it\u2019s perfectly safe.<\/p>\n

Why not try something like this out in our schools.<\/p>\n

Have a happy day.<\/p>\n

Sibo<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A few weeks ago I read a very interesting story about a school overseas that has something called \u201cfriendship benches\u201d.\u00a0 Apparently it started out with just one of the lower grades having a bench but then it spread to the whole school and they ended up having several. I thought the whole idea was seriously … Continue reading “The friendship bench”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[30],"tags":[60,22],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.sibo.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.sibo.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.sibo.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.sibo.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.sibo.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=330"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.sibo.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":331,"href":"https:\/\/blog.sibo.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330\/revisions\/331"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.sibo.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=330"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.sibo.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=330"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.sibo.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=330"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}