• Violence Prevention
• Self Assessment
• Developing and Enhancing Emotional Intelligence
• Top 10 Stress Strategies
• Mediation/Conflict Management - Goals and Objectives
• Using Conflict Recognition and Resolution Skills as Violence Prevention
• Procedures for Mediation
• Role and Function of the High School Student Volunteer
• The Resilient Individual Exercise
• Planning for Violence Prevention
• Systematic Story Telling

Violence Prevention

Dr. Sally Pisarchick, author, is the director of Project Prepare, a preschool grant with the Ohio Department of Education, and Project Support, which uses high school students as academic and social tutors. This noted lecturer currently teaches courses at Kent State University.

Questions for thought:

1. What are some "tried and true" systematic strategies for violence prevention?

2. What can teachers do about violence prevention?

I. What We Do Know

1. Start early
2. Develop philosophical base

II. The Needs of Children

1. Are attached to caring adults
2. Act appropriately
3. Demonstrate conflict resolution skill
4. Are relatively free of a stressor

III. The Needs of Administrators

1. To be part of every solution
2. To facilitate professional effectiveness
3. Commitment to child achievement
4. Zero tolerance for violence

IV. The Keys to Success

V. The Needs of Teachers

1. Staff development
2. Free-wheeling environment
3. Administrators who value teachers
4. Coordination of school policies

VI. Suggested Guidelines

VII. Systematic Strategies for Violence Prevention

VIII. Comprehensive Action Plan

1. Cooperatively driven
2. Open, on-going
3. Includes evaluation and monitoring

IX. What Individuals Can Do To Prevent Violence

X. Develop Standards

Self Assessment

To the degree you feel you are knowledgeable about the issues below or currently practicing in your position, check the appropriate numbers.

(1) awareness only
(2) practiced somewhat
(3) expert

*For the purpose of this assessment we define expert as someones the techniques his or her job and could comfortably teach others the necessary information or skills to implement such strategy.

You may use the above assessment to chart your own new directions. OR

If you wish to make a contribution to the development of new methods and materials on violence prevention, please submit ideas regarding any issue in which you consider yourself expert. If your ideas are published you will be given credit.

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Developing and Enhancing Emotional Intelligence

The Development of Emotional Control

Emotional intelligence is the ability to identify feelings and eal with the feelings appropriately. Students can learn optimism as an inoculation to prevent downward spiraling emotions.

Negative/escalating interactions characterized by intolerance and/or hostility to negative expressions of children or adolescents may results in the railure of the student to develop internalized forms of control or appropriate expressions or responses of emotions.

Learning the processes of a democratic environmnet and opportunities to practice peaceful, even when problem solving is necessary. Withdrawn and/or hostile aggressive children fail to attend to and/or accurately interpret others intentions. They sometimes erroneously assume hostile intent. They lack skill in social problem solving and verbal response strategies. They often don't "get it."

• Some students must be taught the skills of integration of affect (how to recognize internal cues).
• Language must be expanded to enable them to label feelings with appropriate terms.
• Cognition: many have not developed skills for self monitoring. Either because they just do not understand or have not experienced sufficient role models. Awareness of "self talk" and skills to cancel negative murmurings and replace them with positive affirmations can be learned.
• Action (translate strong negative feelings into socially adaptive behavior).
• The role of the parent is critical. Teachers (the school system) must be aware and alert to cues of emotional deficits.
• Famility characteristics of students with continued behavior problems -
  • dysfunctional family boundaries
  • over protection
  • lack of conflict resolution
  • parental asymmetry
  • marital relationship subordinate to parental role

Top 10 Stress Strategies

Strategies

1. Manage-To-Prevent: Building into everyday curriculum management skills related to holistic living, people, time and money. Prevent learned helplessness.
2. Work-It-Out: Under stress kids tend toward unwanted, unwarranted and unnecessary action. Avoid discipline issues by recognizing and responding to excess energy that may become misdirected. Get them up moving, large muscle groups, raising respiratory rate and therein altering blood and brain chemistry.
   *Breathing
   *Yoga stretch
   *In desk or beside desk isometric exercises
3. Talk-It-Out: Magic circle, masks, truth sticks or symbols to use as a stimulator to speak truth. Stage carefully to avoid self or other attack.
4. Music Hath Charms: Develop a library of tapes to determine and shape mood and tempo climate. Ask students to suggest/contribute. Adapt a class "musical signal" for serenity or other desirable emotional postures that may calm of cue. For somedepressed kids it is just as important to step up the pace as to cool it down. Build specific selections into ritual.
5. Touch-It-Out: Create an opportunity for physical contact. Play or ritual activity in which kids can safely touch each other, i.e. high-five, hand clasp with partner, serial back massage, hand-to-hand communication, etc.
6. Read-It-Out: Bibliotherapy, "dead poets soecity", select needs-based appropriate stories to directly and indirectly entertain and inform.
7. Teach-It-Out: Bring as much novelty, variety and excitement into the curriculum to make it come alive, i.e. social studeis, Patrick Henry, et al. Direct didactic (moral or lesson).
8. Write-It-Out (or draw depending on age): Use whatever medium, i.e. finger paint, crayons, cloth, newspapers and magazines for collage, etc. That excites, motivates, or opens channels of locked communications.
9. Snap-It-Out: Picture you. Catch-it-with a camera. A Polaroid can be used to "stage" or catch mug shots to drive home - happy, sad, calm, on task (or whatever body messages that children need to better understand).
10. Help-Em-Think-It-Out: Positive or successful thoughts when depressed or sad. Review strong points. Teach/practice writing or reciting several things in which child is successful. List areas in which child has accomplished something worthwhile of which (s)he can be proud; list areas of improvement. This list can be posted or kept in a private place to be used to reduce anxiety and motivate toward new goals.

Mediation/Conflict Management - Goals and Objectives

Conflict is a daily reality. Our needs, values, goals and opinions naturally clash with those of others. Some conflicts are minor, can be easily resolved or simply overlooked. Conflicts of greater magnitude and with major implications require a strategy for successful resolution. The laternative is destructive tension and deepening enmities. The school-parent relationship is potentially a lengthy one. This relationship has a substantial bearing on the quality and effectiveness of the student's education. Thus, it must be addressed and cannot be ignored or left to go away.

While it is true that individuals can possess a natural ability in the area of conflict resolution, it is also true that conflict resolution can be taught, learned, practiced and refined.

Definition: conflict occurs when two or more parties believe that what each wants is incompatible with what the other wants. A number of assumptions can be made about conflicts:

1. Conflict is an inevitable and important human process.
2. Conflicts are likely to increase in times of change.
3. Conflicts can lead to both creative and destructive results.
4. Most people hold negative perceptions of the word "conflict."
5. Many perceive conflict to be the result of failure on someone's part.
6. There is no best way for dealing with conflict.
7. Properly managed and constructively channeled, conflict can help maintain vigor and creativity in any field.
8. Constructively managed conflict is a key ingredient in the quality of special education programs for systems and individuals.

Some Positive Results of Conflict:

1. Better ideas are produced.
2. People are forced to search for new approaches.
3. Long-standing problems surface and are dealt with.
4. Points of view are clarified.
5. People's creativity is challenged.
6. Relationships and communication are improved and enhanced.
7. Essential rather than peripheral or irrelevant issues are differentiated.

Some Negative Results of Conflict:

1. Some persons may feel demeaned, defeated.
2. The distance between people may be increased.
3. A climate of distrust may begin or be intensified.
4. The end-product is impaired.
5. The tendency toward narrow, subjective self-interest is reinforced.
6. Negative and often irreparable conflict and harm can lie ahead.

Goals of Conflict Management:

1. Recognize differences.
2. Understand differences.
3. Open and improve communication
4. Develop new and different perceptions
5. Develop new and different team cooperation
6. Undertake well-informed decision-making.
7. Develop mutual appreciation of opinions and positions.
8. Search for agreement or positive outcome.

Using Conflict Recognition and Resolution
Skills as Violence Prevention

Conflict Recognition and Resolution

Authenticity - Egocentricity = Charisma

Goal:

Enable students to develop a personal action plan to improve their attitude, knowledge and skills of collaboration through conflict recognition and resolution. To break negative cycles, and needless power struggles in the classroom, on the playground and other social situation.

Objectives:

Teachers will enable students to:

1. Identify sources of conflict in personal relationships.
2. Develop and identify and gain greater insight into their own behavior as a member of the class, the team or a reciprocal friendship.
3. Recognize and carefully select appropriate heroes.
4. Develop appropriate anger managements skills such as stress reduction, recognizing personal anger cues, rethinking old behaviors, developing new positive self-talk scripts, and replacing negative reactive behaviors with calm proactive behavior.

Activities

• Presentations
• Demonstrations
• Develop action plan

Additional resources

• Handouts
• Bibliography

Procedures for Mediation

Ground Rules

1. Mediator establishes ground rules. Each party agress that mediation is viable and they will honor agreements.
2. Mutual respect is required and will be honored.
3. Agree not to interrupt each other.
4. Agree to remain seated.

Phases in Mediation

Phase I:

Introducation - Mediator explains Ground Rules and procedures.

Phase II:

Telling the Story - Parties tell what happened.

Phase III:

Understanding the Problem - Parties talk to each other.

Phase IV:

Alternatives Search - Parties think of many solutions, one possible solution is agree upon.

Phase V:

Resolution - Agreement is written.

Phase VI:

Evaluation or Monitor - Criteria for success agreed upon.

Role and Function of the High School Student Volunteer

The actual work of the high school student volunteer will be largely determined by the sponsor based on factors such as needs of students and/or receiving teacher, time and place volunteer work is to be carried out, interest and skills of the individual volunteers, etc. The following compilation is merely suggested activities that might be considered. The list is broken down into two categories, i.e., support that is directed primarily to the sponsor, and support that is directed to the student with disabilities. The construct is somewhat artificial since in most instances, both should benefit. It is clearly in keeping with the underlying principals of Project Support i.e., SUPPORT for individuals with disabilities and the professionals who serve them. You might consider sending the list to prospective receiving teachers. Teachers who have never used a HSTVs before may have some anxiety regarding what to have the HSTV do. They may not consider all the "back-up" work that HSTVs do until the teacher is ready and organized enough to use them as instructional tutors. The list is not all inclusive. You may have other ideas not listed here. Please share any new and creative way you work with HSTVs on the feedback form in the addendum.

The Resilient Individual Exercise

Name:____________________________________Job Title:______________________________

School District_____________________________Gender_______________Age______________

Phone (w) __________________ (h) __________________

Grew up in (circle one)

Fill out identifiable data only if you are comfortable.

Passages: You are what you ever were. Your view of yesterday, today, tomorrow.

1. On a separate piece of paper draw the floor plan of the home you lived in when you were aged 10 (year you were 10 _______), and any outbuildings i.e. garages, barns, play houses, etc. that particularly stand out in your mind.

2. In the margins around your floor plan jot notes, phrases, messages, scripts of memories.

3. What do you recall knowing/hearing by age ten regarding the following:

a. View of myself, my personality, looks, abilities: ____________________________

_____________________________________________________________________

_____________________________________________________________________

_____________________________________________________________________

b. "Our" family economic status ___________________________________________

religion _______________________________________________________________

ethnic background _______________________________________________________

c. My view of myself as a gendered being i.e. girls are...boys are...girls do...boys do...
_____________________________________________________________________

_____________________________________________________________________

d. The person to whom I turned for comfort, support assistance.

_____________________________________________________________________

e. My best friend(s) ____________________________________________________

f. My general responses to violence, interpersonal conflicts and/or uncomfrotable social situations

_____________________________________________________________________

g. Did you experience any particular enormous overall stressors in life i.e. physical, mental, social, emotional, if so what ____________________________________________________

_____________________________________________________________________

4. What is your current prevailing response to violence in the schools?

_____________________________________________________________________

5. To what or whom do you attribute your prevailing views regarding conflict, aggression?

_____________________________________________________________________

6. What are you now doing about Violence Prevention?

_____________________________________________________________________

7. What do you plan to do about Violence Prevention i.e. what action will you take or have you taken?

_____________________________________________________________________

8. How can insight into your own behavior enable you to better understand your students?

_____________________________________________________________________

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Planning for Violence Prevention
Criteria for Effective School-Based Violence Program

School__________________________Name: (if desired)_________________________

Approx. number of students_________Job title:_________________________________

Following are several criteria for slecting or creating an effective school-based equity program. Directons: Check out any projects in your classroom, building, or district. Use the following criteria to gather data. (Circle all that apply.)

Adapted from criteria of drug education curricula, the W. T. Grant corsortium on the School-Based Promotion of Social Competence, in Hawkins, J. D., Catalano, R. F.; et al. Communitys That Care, San Francisco: Jossey, Bass, Inc. 1992; and Comprehensive Health Education Foundation (1994).

Systematic Story Telling

Management Through Story Telling

1. Tell stories to make a point. Tell storeis to bring fun to learning.
2. Use props to invite interest or deepen an impression.
3. When telling a story about one or your students, colleagues, administrators, etc., always begin with a heroic deed. Relate how s/he went beyond the call of duty to get a particular job done.
4. Make sure it's true. Verify all facts.
5. Stick to one idea or theme.
6. Keep it short. People are more willing to read something they can get through quickly, and then they're more apt to remember and repeat it.
7. Use names. People like to see their names in print.
8. Make sure others see the story. Post it on the bulletin board or send everyone a copy. Be sure to give a framed copy to the person who is recognized. Think of it as an honor.
9. Invite students to write stories. When they decide to write about another person make sure they get permission.
10. Display and use stories when possible and practical.
11. File stories under topical categories. Use stories from the past that really worked on such issues of success as reduction of tardiness, truancy, verbal or physical aggression, etc.
12. Use story development, writing, sharing, in some part of every day curriculum. Storytelling works. It is a part of our heritage. All cultures, ages, genders, races, disabilities, levels of education have used storytelling as a teaching/learning tool.

Source: Adapted from Managing by Storytelling Around (1995) by David Armstrong, CEO of Armstrong Investment.

For more information: Teacher's Workshop Contact Renet Bender and William Bender 766 Collins Road Toccoa, GA 30577 Call: 1-800-991-1114 Fax: 706-282-0516