The PeaceBuilders

Dr. Dennis Embry, a classroom consultant, is a member of Heartsprings, Inc. His program, "PeaceBuilders," has proven effective in showing teachers the intervention strategies and teaching youngsters the social interaction skills necessary to reduce violence in the school environment. Questions for Thought: 1. What principles should form the basis of a plan for reducing aggression and violence? 2. What practical tools will best aid in facilitating such a plan? I. Principles of PeaceBuilders

1. Start early
2. Enhance parenting competence
3. Enhance rate of praise and reward
4. Accept feedback
5. Engage others
6. Self-monitor behavior
7. Expose to positive role modeling

II. Steps to Improving the Environment

1. Disseminate strategies to reduce disruptions
2. Disseminate strategies to improve school climate
3. Strategies should be flexible and adaptable

III. Five PeaceBuilding Rules

1. Praise people
2. Give up put-downs
3. Seek wise people as advisors and friends
4. Notice the hurts you have caused
5. Right wrongs

IV. Student Involvement V. Principal Involvement VI. Family Involvement A few facts about

PeaceBuilders

PeaceBuilders is a program designed to help you create an environment to reduce violence and create a more peaceful way of living in your school, home and community It is not an add-on curriculum, rather it is meant to involve schools, parents, and entire communities, so that peaceful behavior becomes an integral part of a child's life. PeaceBuilders is dynamic; it provides you with took and techniques you can adapt to your own classroom and community, and that change and grow with new findings and changes in the environment. The PeaceBuilders program is based on years of solid research and hands-on experience.

1. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have recently awarded a three-year grant to measure, scientifically, the long term results on juvenile arrest of programs built around the PeaceBuilders' tools. This is in anticipation of a possible national roll-out of the program.
2. It is currently working effectively in 29 schools in California, and has been implemented in schools in Texas, Tucson and Sierra Vista, Arizona. The program is also being used in various locations in the country
3. A program created from PeaceBuilders materials can be enhanced significantly through community involvement (i.e. the media, the offering of prizes for outstanding achievements in building peace, special events, etc.). PeaceBuilders can supply extra items, such as a comic strip for your local newspaper, or prizes. The program can be subsidized by the businesses community, by PTA's, civic organizations, Sheriff's and Police Departments and local governments.

• PeaceBuilders gives teachers more time to teach, because it substantially reduces behavioral problems.
• With less time spent on discipline, students have more time to learn. PeaceBuilders has been shown to improve the learning process, leading to increased academic success.
• Because PeaceBuilders reduces classroom distractions, teachers can actually teach between 10% and 30% more of the time.
• An integral ingredient of PeaceBuilders-praise-has been proven to increase desirable behavior at home, at school and at work.
• PeaceBuilders encourages cooperative behavior by focusing on positive actions and behavior. It does not focus on what kids are doing "wrong," which has been shown to actually encourage antisocial behavior.
• PeaceBuilders makes kids and families active partners with the school.
• PeaceBuilders lets teachers teach, and families love.
• PeaceBuilders is based on proven technology
• The PeaceBuilders approach is the result of several million dollars in research and more than 18 years of study. PeaceBuilders has grown out of U.S. government research into tracing the causes of youthful violence.
• PeaceBuilders encourages healthy, respectful interaction for kids with both peers and adults
• PeaceBuilders goes beyond Conflict Mediation. Conflict mediation reacts to violence; PeaceBuilders helps prevent it.
• PeaceBuilders creates a positive, cooperative atmosphere in the classroom, on the playground and in homes. Conflict mediation emphasizes that something wrong has happened, which creates tension.
• Because conflict mediation cannot deal with every act of aggression in a school (nothing else would get done), it leads to "selective enforcement." This influences kids to become more devious in their acts of violence. This combination of deviousness and aggression is one of the most serious predictors for later youth violence.
• PeaceBuilders is not a curriculum, per se. It is the path to a new way of life for our kids, especially those who might become violence-prone.
• Research shows clearly that it is possible to predict, with an accuracy rate of 80%, which kids by 5th grade will be enmeshed in the juvenile justice system by their early teens. These predictions are based on three specific criteria. PeaceBuilders addresses those specific factors dynamically and successfully.
• PeaceBuilders incorporates the recommendations by the American Psychological Association for the prevention of violence.
• Teachers and staff who implement PeaceBuilders have more fun, and report they actually look forward to coming to school again.
• The PeaceBuilders vision is to involve the entire community: kids, teachers, parents, law enforcement agencies, businesses, social service agencies, political organizations, churches.
• The consistent use of PeaceBuilders tools and techniques, in theory, can reduce youth violence by as much as 50%.
• Many PeaceBuilders materials are available in both English and Spanish.
• Although PeaceBuilders starts at school, it offers a number of "bridge-building" tools and techniques to "pull the parents in", which has been shown to be more effective than parent-training courses.
• PeaceBuilders offers special tools to help families with more disruptive children.
• Because PeaceBuilders techniques are adapted throughout the school, parents of troubled children do not feel "singled out," or branded as incompetent.
• For children with Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD), PeaceBuilders follows the scientific research on classroom and school climate precisely, which helps reduce symptoms of the condition.
• PeaceBuilders can enhance the effectiveness of other programs in the school. For example, Parents on Patrol become Peace-Coaches who look for positive behavior, instead of focusing only on "bad" behavior.
• PeaceBuilders can be used as part of a Language Arts curriculum on whole language. Many PeaceBuilders products fit the concept of Daily Oral Language, and the story/workbooks are based on highly successful research into Reading Recovery.
• PeaceBuilders includes many techniques for building bridges to your business community.
• PeaceBuilders offers workshops, videos, newsletters and other materials to make training easy and to keep you up to date with new developments.
• PeaceBuilders offers coaching in methods for getting positive stories into your local media.
• PeaceBuilders is not just for K-S. "Readiness to Learn" materials for preschoolers, as well as programs for middle schools, are now being prepared.
• Law enforcement agencies have been among the most enthusiastic supporters of the PeaceBuilders program.
• PeaceBuilders is not designed merely to help people to understand behavioral problems. It is designed to create behavioral change.

The use of these techniques can reduce the risk of juvenile delinquency by 40% - 50%, regardless of socio-economic conditions of the famillies, school, and neighborhood.

Involvement

Student Involvement

A PeaceBuilding act every day

Write mediation essays

Have lunch with "wise people"

Write praise notes

Principal Involvement

• Set up Peace and Practice tables
• Write PeaceBuilding postcards
• Note individual child successes
• Encourage PeaceBuilding activities

Family Involvement

• Use Praise Notes
• Interactive storybooks
• Mail in PeaceBuilders nominations
• Sign "Book of Wisdom"

Violence Prevention/Reduction

For more information

Teacher's Workshop 1250 Overlook Ridge Bishop, GA 30621

Call: 1-800-991-1114

Email us at: [email protected]