Community Boards believes that conflict resolution provides one of the strongest opportunities for educators needing effective violence reduction and prevention results. Our programming offers a multifaceted approach that encompasses peer mediation, asset and character development, staff development, plus parent and community participation.
To develop our programming for youth, Community Boards exported the values of our community-based mediation model: improved communication and problem solving, self confidence, empathy, cooperation, fairness, compromise and consensus building. Our staff adapted, field tested, revised and refined these program practices and resources specifically for students and the adults who educate and nurture them. Each guide and manual, training agenda, lesson, activity and worksheet has been rigorously field tested in literally thousands of classrooms and school sites.
Community Boards’ programming, soundly grounded in conflict resolution education theory, is broad based and easily adaptable. This allows for program applications in a great variety of settings and for diverse populations of youth and adults.
Our twenty five years of hands-on experiences with classroom teachers, school counselors, nurses, social workers, principals and their professional staffs has made Community Boards one of the United States' oldest nonprofit providers of violence prevention and conflict resolution materials and services.
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Core Goals & Objectives
The main goal of Community Boards’ programming is to teach the peaceful expression and early resolution of conflict. With our programming, the following objectives are emphasized:
1) To help youth learn effective communication and problem solving techniques as important life skills.
2) To promote social and emotional learning by:
+ Helping children learn ways to express anger and other strong emotions constructively
+ Encouraging the development of empathy for others
+ Providing strategies and tools for better impulse control
+ Learning to be an effective member of a group
3) To enhance academic performance by:
+ Helping students develop critical thinking skills: means-end thinking; weighing pros and cons; alternative solution thinking; consequential thinking
+ Improving self-esteem: students feel a sense of power and accomplishment at being able to peacefully resolve their own conflicts
4) To foster resiliency by:
+ Providing students with tools and strategies that will aid them in expressing and resolving many of their own conflicts peacefully
+ Providing experiences through peer mediation that enhance a sense of belonging
5) To actively contribute to the improvement of the school environment by:
+ Building a stronger sense of peer cooperation and community at school
+ Improving working relationships between staff and students
+ Encouraging students to take more responsibility for their actions and how they affect others and their surroundings
+ Decreasing the need for disciplinary referrals, suspensions and explusions
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Core Concepts and Skills
These are the core concepts and skills to which students are introduced. When properly introduced and reinforced via our approach, students gain access to life skills that benefit them, their peers and their homes and communities.
1) Understanding Conflict
+ Conflict is a natural part of our lives. We all have problems.
+ We can learn and grow because of conflict.
+ The conflict behaviors we learn at an early age can be chganged.
2) Approaches to Conflict
+ We have each learned a way of approaching conflict.
+ The three common ways people deal with conflict: fight, flight or problem solve.
+ The approach we use depends on the situation.
3) Emotions
+ Emotions can cause conflicts or escalate them.
+ To handle emotions in conflict better, we need:
- To be able to identify emotions when they surface
- To express emotions in a healthy way
4) Communication
+ Communication can be improved by learning and practicing specific skills.
+ Good communication skills can prevent conflicts or help resolve them.
+ Good listening skills are essential to understanding what a person's problem is.
+ Speaking effectively (without judgment or blame) helps others understand how we see the problem.
5) Problem Solving
+ In order to be effective problem solvers, students also need:
- To correctly identify the problem
- To generate as many alternative solutions to a given problem as possible
- To anticipate and evaluate the possible outcomes of different solutions to a problem
- To learn a problem solving process to solve interpersonal conflicts with peers, siblings and parents
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