CREATING THE PEACEABLE SCHOOL:
A Comprehensive Program for Teaching Conflict Resolution  

Building an effective, responsible citizenry is the challenge that faces society as we approach the 21st century. Schools, as significant places in the lives of children, should be at the forefront in answering that challenge. How well this challenge is answered will determine America's future role in the community of nations, the character of our society, and the quality of individual lives.

Violence prevention in today's schools is a major concern of students, educators and parents. Violence prevention is choosing peacemaking behavior - an unlikely choice when one has not learned such behavior. Imagine a school or classroom where learners manage and resolve conflicts, both with and without adult assistance - a place where adults and children work together and respect, trust, help, and share with one another - where students and adults express feelings in ways that are neither aggressive nor destructive.

This workshop explores a comprehensive plan for achieving this vision. Participants will become immersed in a curriculum that provides the core resources for creating peaceable classrooms and peaceable schools. Central to the curriculum is the creation of a cooperative school context, achieved through the institution of a rights and responsibilities approach to designing a discipline program. Through the conflict resolution strategies of mediation, negotiation, and group problem solving, students learn to recognize, manage, and resolve conflicts in peaceful, noncoercive ways.

Participants will experience:

• building a peaceable climate

• understanding conflict

• understanding peace and peacemaking

• 4 principles of conflict resolution

• peer mediation, negotiation and group problem solving

• strategies for implementation

Learn how to create a safe, caring, respectful classroom and school community by teaching young people to resolve their conflicts peacefully and providing adults ways to model positive conflict resolution and problem solving strategies. The peaceable school becomes a reality when a critical mass of the students and adults within the school consistently choose peacemaking behaviors to live day to day in their school environment.

Participants will receive in-depth training through active involvement in conflict simulations, discussions and presentation. This in-depth training is in the foundation philosophy necessary to understand the efficacy of conflict resolution principles and in the processes and skills of conflict resolution necessary to implement and maintain an effective conflict resolution education program.

 

Participants will receive Creating the Peaceable School: A Comprehensive Program for Teaching Conflict Resolution by Bodine, Crawford and Schrumpf (Research Press, 1994).