The Matzmichim Model
Why Social Status Matters
Aggression among students cannot always be understood simply as the behavior of a troubled or poorly adjusted child. Research shows that relational aggression can also serve a social function, helping students gain, maintain, or protect their status within the peer group.
The Matzmichim Model was developed in response to this social dynamic. Rather than focusing only on individual behavior, it works with the classroom as a social group and addresses the norms, expectations, and social rewards that shape students’ behavior.
The model seeks to reduce the perceived social benefits of aggression while strengthening classroom norms that support caring, courage, inclusion, solidarity, and other prosocial behaviors.
At the heart of the model is the idea that every child can find a meaningful and positive place within the social life of the class, whether they are introverted or extroverted, socially central or more peripheral.
We use the term Uplifter to describe a student who contributes to others’ sense of belonging and helps peers feel good about themselves.
An Uplifter may be a student who includes someone who is left out, stands up for another student, shows care, resists negative peer pressure, or helps create a safer and more supportive social environment.
The model does not attempt to tell students how they should behave through lectures or moral instruction. Instead, it creates opportunities for students themselves to reflect on the social consequences of different behaviors and to express what they value, respect, or reject within their peer group.
We use the term Uplifter to describe a student who contributes to others’ sense of belonging and helps peers feel good about themselves.
Matzmichim workshops combine Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) with a facilitation method developed through more than 20 years of fieldwork with students and educators.
Sessions include games and activities designed to bring existing social dynamics to the surface. These activities open the way for an authentic social-emotional conversation about issues that may otherwise remain unspoken: exclusion, humiliation, social pressure, aggression, belonging, friendship, courage, and responsibility toward others.
The facilitator’s role is not to lecture students or provide ready-made answers. Instead, the facilitator creates a safe and open space in which students can examine their own classroom reality and hear how their peers experience it.
This process can also give a voice to the classroom’s “silent majority” – students who may dislike aggressive or hurtful behavior but usually remain quiet. When these students express their views, they make visible attitudes that may previously have remained hidden.
One of the distinctive features of the Matzmichim approach is the use of indirect, reflective questions. Students are not simply asked whether aggression is “good” or “bad.” Instead, they are invited to think about real social judgments and experiences.
For example:
Questions of this kind allow students to express how different behaviors affect their respect and appreciation for peers. They also help students recognize the social costs and rewards of different behaviors.
Rather than adults defining what is acceptable, the peer group itself begins to signal which behaviors receive appreciation and which may lead to disapproval or loss of respect.
This is a central mechanism of the model.
Students who use relational aggression may do so partly because they believe it is an effective way to gain or protect social status. When classmates openly express that certain aggressive behaviors reduce rather than increase their respect for someone, this belief can begin to weaken.
At the same time, students hear their peers express appreciation for behaviors such as helping others, showing courage, including someone who is left out, or resisting social pressure.
The goal is not to promise students that prosocial behavior will make them more popular. Rather, the model works to reduce the social legitimacy and perceived status benefits of aggression, while strengthening the visibility and legitimacy of prosocial behavior within the group.
In this way, students themselves participate in defining and reinforcing new classroom norms.
A key strength of the model is that the content comes from the students’ own social world.
The process does not rely on speeches, preaching, or advice from adults. Students are encouraged to think independently, speak authentically, and examine what they themselves value in their peers.
By giving students a structured way to express these judgments, the model strengthens positive forces that already exist within the classroom and increases students’ ability to influence the social climate around them.
The Matzmichim Model has developed through extensive field experience with tens of thousands of students and educators, alongside research and professional knowledge from Israel and abroad.
Its development has been informed by research on peer status, relational aggression, group norms, restorative practices, and violence prevention, as well as ongoing collaboration with researchers and educational professionals.
In recent years, Matzmichim has also conducted academic research examining the effects of the model, including changes in classroom aggression, teachers’ perceived competence in dealing with aggression, and students’ perceptions of aggression as a strategy for improving social status.
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