Waging Peace in Our Schools

From the largest and most successful school initiatives in social and emotional learning in the country-The Resolving Conflict Creatively Program, now active in more than 350 schools nationwide-comes a powerful, practical guide for teaching young people to empathize, mediate, negotiate, and create peace. The authors address everything from minor schoolyard conflicts to violent outbursts, and offer educators and parents proven strategies for enhancing children's emotional, social, and conflict resolution skills.

From the largest and most successful school initiatives in social and emotional learning in the country-The Resolving Conflict Creatively Program, now active in more than 350 schools nationwide-comes a powerful, practical guide for teaching young people to empathize, mediate, negotiate, and create peace. The authors address everything from minor schoolyard conflicts to violent outbursts, and offer educators and parents proven strategies for enhancing children's emotional, social, and conflict resolution skills.

Publishers Weekly

The authors, longtime teachers and educational activists, are both associated with the Resolving Conflict Creatively Program (RCCP), which began in Brooklyn and has spread across the country, now serving 325 schools. Here they present with impressive clarity the details of how this mediation approach has worked. Lantieri and Patti convincingly argue that, because of media glamorization of violence, the proliferation of weapons among students and the difficult home lives of many children, a method for achieving nonviolent solutions to problems of communication is as important as those for teaching reading and writing. The authors describe many examples of how RCCP has worked in the school to reduce physical violence, foster appreciation of cultural diversity, enhance learning and promote greater communication between students and their teachers, as well as between students both in and outside the school environment. Included is a history of the RCCP, a working model of the program for professionals who want to adopt it for their schools, as well as suggestions for parents who want to create "peaceable homes." Author tour. (Sept.)

Linda Lantieri is cofounder and national director of the Resolving Conflict Creatively Program National Center, an initiative of Educators for Social Responsibility. Janet Patti is associate professor of curriculum and teaching at Hunter College in New York.