Kids working it out: strategies and stories for making peace in our schools
Short Title:
Kids working it out
Format:
Book
Publication Date:
Nov 30, 2002
Publisher:
Jossey-Bass
Place of Publication:
San Francisco
Pages:
360
Sources ID:
88591
Notes:
Access: http://catdir.loc.gov/catdir/toc/wiley031/2002015275.htmlExternal Resources: Cite This Item Search for versions with same title and author | Advanced options ...
Edition: 1st ed.
Contents: Conflict resolution education : the need and the potential.; Kids and conflict in schools : what's it really like? /; Randy Compton --; An introduction to conflict resolution education /; Tricia S. Jones --; The building blocks of conflict resolution education : direct instruction, adult modeling, and core practices /; Carol Miller Lieber --; What works : success stories in conflict resolution education.; The heart of the matter : social and emotional learning as a foundation for conflict resolution education /; Rachael Kessler --; "We can handle this ourselves" : learning to negotiate conflicts /; Jennifer K. Druliner, Heather E. Prichard --; Students helping students : peer mediation /; Richard Cohen --; "We can do it too!" : peer mediation for special education students /; Paul I. Kaplan --; Express yourself! : expressive arts and conflict discovery /; Sarah Pirtle.; Making meaningful connections : curriculum infusion /; Rachel A. Poliner --; Making things right : restorative justice for school communities /; Alice Ierley, David Claassen-Wilson --; School bullying : prevention and intervention /; Beverly B. Title --; R.E.S.P.E.C.T. : appreciating and welcoming differences /; Priscilla Prutzman --; School's out : time for fun, relaxation, and peaceful conflict resolution education /; Sandy Tsubokawa Whittall --; Reflections on stories of success /; Tricia S. Jones --; Postscript: The importance of supporting conflict resolution education /; Amalia G. Cuervo --; Appendix A: books, publications, and websites --; Appendix B: Organizations and programs.
Access: Materials specified: Table of contentshttp://catdir.loc.gov/catdir/toc/wiley031/2002015275.html
Materials specified: Contributor biographical informationhttp://catdir.loc.gov/catdir/bios/wiley043/2002015275.html
Materials specified: Publisher descriptionhttp://catdir.loc.gov/catdir/description/wiley036/2002015275.html
Materials specified: Contributor biographical informationhttp://www.loc.gov/catdir/bios/wiley043/2002015275.html
Materials specified: Publisher descriptionhttp://www.loc.gov/catdir/description/wiley036/2002015275.html
Materials specified: Table of contentshttp://www.loc.gov/catdir/toc/wiley031/2002015275.html
Geographic: United States.
Note(s): Includes bibliographical references (pages 311-324) and indexes.
General Info: National bibliography no: GBA2V8903 Other format available: Online version:; Kids working it out.; 1st ed.; San Francisco : Jossey-Bass, �2003; Online version:; Kids working it out.; 1st ed.; San Francisco : Jossey-Bass, �2003
Class Descriptors: LC: LB3013.32; Dewey: 371.7/82
Responsibility: Tricia S. Jones, Randy Compton, editors.
Vendor Info: Baker & Taylor Brodart Baker and Taylor Ingram YBP Library Services (BKTY BROD BTCP INGR YANK) 40.00 $43.00 Status: active
Material Type: Internet resource (url)
Date of Entry: 20021017
Update: 20181220
Provider: OCLC
Heart of the Matter: Social and Emotional Learning as a Foundation for Conflict Resolution Education (Rachael Kessler, PassageWays Institute). In Their Own Words: �I Know That I Have Grown a Lot Emotionally�. 5 �We Can Handle This Ourselves�: Learning to Negotiate Conflicts (Jennifer K. Druliner and Heather E. Prichard, Association for Conflict Resolution). In Their Own
Words: �I�ve Changed After the PYN Training�. 6 Students Helping Students: Peer Mediation (Richard Cohen, School Mediation Associates). In Their Own Words: �Peer Mediation Makes the World Better�. 7 �We Can Do It Too!�: Peer Mediation for Special Education Students (Paul I. Kaplan, Hannah More School). In Their Own Words: �Every School Should Have It�. 8 Express Yourself! Expressive Arts and Conflict Discovery (Sarah Pirtle, Discovery Center). In Their Own Words: �A Powerful Healing Tool and a Powerful Communication Tool�. 9 Making
Meaningful Connections: Curriculum Infusion (Rachel A. Poliner, Educational Consultant). In Their Own Words: �Infusion Lets You Do Lots More with Less Time�. 10 Making Things Right: Restorative Justice for School Communities (Alice Ierley and David Claassen-Wilson, School Mediation Center). In Their Own Words: �People Actually Learn to Be Better People�. 11 School
Bullying: Prevention and Intervention (Beverly B. Title, Teaching Peace). In Their Own Words: �It Has Really Helped How Safe We Feel�. 12 R.E.S.P.E.C.T.: Appreciating and Welcoming Differences (Priscilla Prutzman, Creative Response to Conflict). In Their Own Words: �It Made Me Speak Up for Myself and My Culture�. 13 School�s Out: Time for Fun, Relaxation, and Peaceful Conflict Resolution Education (Sandy Tsubokawa Whittall, Educators for Social Responsibility). In Their Own Words: �When the Kids Are Playing, They Are Working as a Team�. 14 Reflections on Stories of Success (Tricia S. Jones, Temple University, and Randy Compton, School Mediation Center). Postscript: The Importance of Supporting Conflict Resolution Education (Amalia G. Cuervo). Notes. Appendix A: Books, Publications, and Websites. Appendix B: Organizations and Programs. About the Editors. About the Contributors. Name Index. Subject Index. ( ) Add/View Comments ** Summary ** Kids who understand how to manage conflict successfully can transform their schools into safer and kinder places to learn. Kids Working It Out offers educators and parents a guide to the most current and effective school-based conflict resolution programs and shows how these programs can make a positive difference in our schools. Throughout the book, students and teachers share their stories of what it's really like in today's schools and reveal how conflict resolution education has shaped their experiences. Kids Working It Out covers a wide range of topics -- curriculum integration, peer mediation, restorative justice, and others -- and shows what it takes to implement an effective program in any school and any community. Excerpt KIDS WORKING IT OUT Strategies and Stories for Making Peace in Our Schools JOSSEY-BASS Copyright (c) 2003 Tricia S. Jones and Randolph O. Compton All right reserved.
ISBN: 0-7879-6379-8 Chapter One KIDS AND CONFLICT IN SCHOOLS What's It Really Like? Randy Comton Being a kid in today's public schools is a challenge. Rumors, fights, cheating, tattling, bullying, humiliation, and isolation all still exist, often with a new twist. Given the changes that have occurred over the last few decades, many of us may not even know what kids face and feel on a daily basis. Many of us may believe that there has been a dramatic increase in foul language, drug abuse, disrespect, depression, and suicide. One thing we know for certain is that much has changed for kids in school in the last century. Schools are no longer one-room buildings filled with kids of different ages taking precious time out from working in the fields. Schools are no longer places where all children sit quietly in desks neatly arranged in factory-like rows reading in unison from standard and often biased text books. Schools are no longer places where conflicts stop at bloody noses and bruised feelings. The world of Dick and Jane and See Spot Run has changed for good. As a direct result, kids, now more than ever, need skills for living and working together in an increasingly interdependent world-skills in such areas as handling conflicts, managing intense emotions, and making wise choices for themselves and their community. In this chapter, we look at some of the key issues facing kids today-how schools have changed over time, what life at school feels like for kids, and what experts in the field believe about students and schools today-and set the stage for showing why conflict resolution education is such a vital movement for making peace not only in our schools but also in our world. Having a solid understanding of where we have come from and where we are heading will give us a larger, more complete perspective for making the best curricular decisions for our children and for ourselves. Our Changing Educational Models As our society has changed, so have our schools. Early schools were institutions modeled after the designs and influences of the agricultural age. Short and disrupted school years were created to help socialize children and increase basic literacy. Families valued education, but they also had to balance the needs of the field and the farm. Later schools were modeled after the industrial age, replete with factory-like replicas of educational efficiency, such as desks neatly lined in rows, standard textbooks, and standard norms taught in a mechanical and efficient way. Discipline was often harsh and obedience swift so as to help establish social norms and social control. At the time, the American dream helped forge a generation of individuals interested in progress, freedom, and tolerance. However, much of the racial, ethnic, and religious diversity that existed in our country was molded into predominantly white, middle-class values. American schools were a melting pot for many cultures and many traditions, and for the time being, the melting pot represented the form that public education followed. But as times changed, our social structures evolved, and so did school life. The clearly demarcated roles that defined parents, principals, teachers, and children began to erode. The old expectations that boys would be naughty and girls would be nice began to dissolve. The efficient, predictable, factory-like structure of life and school began to complexify, and many of our regular ways of doing things began to change. As we know now, our world and our schools have become "cosmopolitan" in nature, and the computer and the evolving nature of families have forever changed our social and educational patterns of interaction. Today we are a worldly mix of cultural values and gender roles and expectations, engaged in time-efficient and overlapping activities. We have broken down the timeworn boundaries of the past and created interrelated social structures largely influenced by the information age and its scientific advances. Our simple nuclear families and "nuclear" schools-where all children lived in a predictable family unit and all students learned in a predictable classroom experience-changed. Now we live in multiracial families, single-parent families, and nontraditional families determined not only by blood but also by our interests, our geography, and our creativity. We also live with a multitude of choices in public education, from focus schools to charter schools, from home schools to after-schools. During this time, we outgrew the influences of the farm life and the factory line and instead have adopted the computer network as our model. Our lives are filled with cross-generating beliefs and endless streams of information. The scientific-material-information age-and "cosmopolitan" culture-has shaped schools inexorably-and our kids face the conflicts, the choices, and the challenges that the culture brings. A Day in the Life If we are truly to understand what it is like being a kid in today's schools, we can best do so by putting ourselves in their shoes for a day. Consider a day in the life of a "typical" schoolchild; let's name her Carla. Carla is a seventh grader living in a middle- to lower-class suburb with her mom, who has recently divorced. Carla attends a junior high school typical of other schools in the country: the building has narrow hallways; brick walls on all sides with small, high windows; bathrooms with few amenities and no art; toilets that are often littered with toilet paper; and outdoor landscaping that looks like it could use some financial help. At 6 A.M., Carla wakes up after some nagging by her mother, spends half an hour dressing, then rushes to make sure she has her books and belongings for the day. Breakfast is on the run, half of it eaten in the car. Carla gets into a conflict with her mom about eating well for lunch and hardly has time to have a real conversation about it because her mom is preoccupied with her own day ahead. By the time she is at school at 7 A.M., she is only half awake and hoping that the conflict that she had yesterday with a friend will go away, that her social life will improve, and that her teacher will notice how much work she did for her project due today. In the hallway, other students are drifting in. Some arrived before 7 A.M., having been dropped off by their parents who needed to get to work early. Some take advantage of a modest breakfast of white bread French toast loaded with maple syrup provided by the school; others come early to attend a student council meeting or an early morning sports practice session. By the time the buses and parents arrive with the rest of the students, the school starts to hum with activity and the burgeoning social scene. Carla finds her two best friends, Mia and Crystal, and immediately starts talking about her day-the hassle she got from her mom that morning, the assignment she had last night for history, and the overly strict teacher she has to face in math. Carla drifts from one class to another, each one lasting fifty minutes and separated by a short four-minute passing period. Sometimes her schedule changes because of advisory period. This is a short morning class meant to bring kids together as a "family," but many teachers don't always use it well, and it often turns into silent reading time. Carla likes a lot of her teachers because they try to help her in school, but she doesn't like all the homework they give. All the students have "time-trackers" in which they keep their class schedule and assignments. More than once she has forgotten to look at it and missed something important. The hallways are crowded, and stuff happens there that teachers either overlook or can't see-such as teasing, harassment, "dirty looks," and verbal threats. Suki and Jasmine are spreading rumors about Valerie for being "loose." Martin is being harassed again by Jon, Darryl, and Ian. They are calling him "gay" and laughing at him. Carla sort of hates it but figures it's just part of life. Sometimes she even says mean things herself, figuring the person really deserves it or that it doesn't bother him much anyway. Her language arts teacher, Ms. DeWitt, teaches kids not to use put-downs, and it works in her classroom; but outside her class the rules are different. And Carla's mother says that this was the way school was when she was growing up and to just get along because, as she says, "boys will be boys. You aren't going to change that." Classes often seem like a blur, with one or two good classes or favorite teachers interspersed throughout her day. Her teachers have many different styles of teaching; some are old-style and authoritarian, others more willing to listen. She likes teachers who know how to really listen and who are firm but not mean. She wishes secretly that there were more like them. At her school, over ten different ethnicities are represented, and more than seven different languages are spoken at home. The pressure to perform is intense because her school has lower test scores than other schools in the district. This means lots of homework and not enough time to spend with her mom when she gets home after school-something she sort of misses. She has even heard of an elementary school that eliminated recess so that the kids could spend more time on academics. Her mom thinks that she should do better in school, but Carla doesn't care because none of the subjects interest her except for language arts. The language arts teacher uses really good books with stories that mean something to her and her life. Too many of the other teachers just use standard textbooks and give boring tests. She finds out later in the day that her close friend Jackson got busted for wearing a ball cap in the school. There is a school rule that says no hats can be worn inside the school. He was walking down the hallway when the science teacher, Mr. Markowitz, yelled at him from behind, told him to stop, and yanked his hat off his head. Jackson told the teacher that he would have taken it off if the teacher hadn't been "such a jerk." That got him sent to the office quick, and he didn't like going to the assistant principal's office because the assistant principal has a "holier than thou" attitude while pretending to be friends with the students. Something the assistant principal said made Jackson blow up in anger, and he got sent to "in-school suspension." Carla doesn't know what the big deal about hats is when there are plenty of other kids doing drugs, having sex, and harassing other students behind teachers' backs. And a few of the teachers do their fair share of humiliating students as well. All of the students are changing physically and emotionally in ways that some of the teachers have a hard time appreciating. At lunch, Carla gets into a fight with Kristen over something dumb. Kristen always has to be right, and the argument really seemed to be about something else, but the bell rang and everybody starting talking about going to the next class, and the two of them never got it resolved. Carla is on the soccer team, so after school she spends the next couple of hours in practice. Thankfully she doesn't have to deal with bullies on her way home. They love harassing kids when teachers aren't around. Then she goes home and finds her mom there frantically preparing dinner for her and her older brother, who is in high school. Dinner has to be quick because there is a parent evening at school that they have to attend. Carla decides to stay home and do homework, but ends up talking with her friend on the phone for forty-five minutes before actually sitting down to read her assignments and do her homework. She goes to bed at 9:30 P.M., feeling a little overwhelmed and empty inside. * * * Carla is only one fictitious student similar to millions of students around the country. Her story is representative of the daily activities and conflicts in her intellectual, social, spiritual, and physical life. Indeed, this story shows only the point of view of the student and lacks many other, sometimes more mature, perspectives and realities. Yet for her there are many daily conflicts that exist in a school modeled after both factory-like education (desks always in rows, classes moving in a predictable and clockwork schedule, and standardized textbook learning) and computer- and cosmopolitan-like education (many ethnicities; busy, overlapping schedules; Internet-based learning). Life for children in our nation's schools is complex and difficult to manage. They grow up in a fast-paced world where some parents are often too busy seeking the American dream to provide them with the time, the authority, and the attention they so desperately need-or their parents provide them with too much from the American dream, causing the kids to be spoiled and weak in character. It has been said, and is likely true, that children have been a challenge to their elders since the beginning of time. But if we are to create present-day solutions, we have to understand the present-day
Collection:
Evidence-based Teacher Professional Development
Visibility:
Public (group default)
Abstract:
(Show)
In this volume, students - and the teachers who have worked with them - tell in their own voices how they have learned to deal with conflict in schools. Then, experts in the field analyse these experiences and provide recommendations for readers in similar situations. This book teaches parents and teachers about effective conflict resolution programmes in schools, how they can make a positive difference and what they can learn from the failures.