Newswise — Tricia Jones wants the nation's schools to be chock full of teachers like Colleen Kelley.
"Whenever I start getting a little tired," says Jones, "I think of her and others I've met through the past years who are out there doing this work in the ways that matter most."
"This work" is integrating conflict resolution education (CRE) in the classroom--making dealing with opinions and issues and conflicts and personalities and emotions as much a part of the learning in a school day as doing algebra or reading Chaucer.
That's "the vaccination" needed to make America's schools safer—and to help children achieve academic success, too, says Jones, a conflict-resolution specialist in Temple University's College of Education.
"We need to help prevent students from developing the social disease of aggression, rather than waiting to have to cure the disease once it has happened," says Jones. "For schools to work, it's important that students are safe emotionally, as well as physically. Teachers need to create a caring community in their classroom.
"School needs to be someplace where students are valued, where they are respected. Research proves conclusively that students' social-emotional competence fosters better academic performance. When they are more self-aware and emotionally connected, they can focus on academics and achieve in a supportive environment. That's an important link that people often miss."
While incidents of aggravated assault and weapons-related violence in schools grab headlines, bullying and social aggression in schools "is truly epidemic," says Jones. Ninety percent of fourth- through eighth-graders, and 80 percent of adolescents, have reported being victims of bullying in school, she adds.
"A large part of the problem is that students are not taught how to deal with conflict and how to create communities in which social aggression is not acceptable," she says.
Kelley, Jones' model, has created such a community of respect in her junior high school classroom in Fort Collins, Colo. In her class, discipline problems "don't exist," Kelley never raises her voice, and she loves to come to work.
"The kids have built a community in our classroom where they feel safe, where they respect each other, where it is OK to have different ideas, where we listen and explore together," Kelley says in Kids Working It Out: Stories and Strategies for Making Peace in Our Schools (2003, Jossey Bass), co-edited by Jones and Randy Compton. "It has made my teaching open into a whole new realm of reward and fulfillment."
Kelley was a teacher for years before she underwent CRE and social and emotional learning training to change the climate of her classroom. Through a project called Conflict Resolution Education in Teacher Education (CRETE), Jones is working to provide aspiring teachers with that same type of training even before they graduate.
The National Center for Education Statistics reports that about one-third of new teachers leave the profession within five years—and their lack of preparation to manage problems with student behavior is a big reason why, according to Jones.
"Teachers are leaving the schools before they can master their profession and use their skills to help students learn. If teachers are taught conflict education and can impart the skills and knowledge to their students, they can help students create a safe, caring and constructive community that enhances the teachers' ability to teach and students' ability to learn," says Jones, noting that teacher attrition is particularly problematic in urban schools.
Jones is utilizing a two-year, $128,000 grant from the George Gund Foundation to incorporate a conflict-resolution training program into the curriculum for pre-service teachers at Cleveland State University (CSU). This summer, she will oversee the training of education professors at CSU, who will begin implementing the program this fall with 60 aspiring teachers, many of whom could end up teaching in Cleveland's urban schools.
Jones also has applied for a $503,274 grant from the Fund for Improvement of Post Secondary Education (FIPSE) of the U.S. Department of Education to expand the project in Cleveland and begin a similar program with 120 aspiring teachers at Temple University, starting in spring 2005. Temple is the predominant educator of teachers for the School District of Philadelphia, the fifth-largest school district in the country.
Partners in CRETE include Temple, Cleveland State, Kent State University, which will evaluate the project, and the Ohio Commission on Dispute Revolution and Conflict Management. Jones will follow the teachers until two years after graduation and compare their experiences to others who have not received CRE training to determine the impact the training has on teacher attrition rates.
With the additional FIPSE funding, instructional materials would be developed so that colleges and universities nationwide could begin infusing their undergraduate teacher education curricula with CRE.
Currently, Temple education students can take electives that focus on conflict resolution. But including components of CRE is pertinent to the success of all aspiring teachers—and of schools and students, maintains Jones, editor of Conflict Resolution Quarterly since 2001.
"The timing is right for pre-service implementation now," she says, noting that CRE educators have found that infusing the curriculum is the best approach to keeping it viable. Past program models were considered ancillary and often were subject to termination or downsizing when resources dwindled and educators were pressured to "teach to the test."
"Faculty will deliver elements of the curriculum to students through their current courses," says Jones, noting that the model mirrors what will happen when pre-service teachers graduate and incorporate CRE into their own classrooms. CRETE graduates will have CRE-trained, in-school mentors when they begin their teaching.
For Jones, a Temple professor since 1990 who formerly worked in divorce and family mediation, CRETE is a chance to make a real impact on the nation's schools.
"In divorce and family mediation, I found we were waiting too late to help people with bad conflict-resolution skills. We were trying to give them the skills they should have gotten in elementary school.
"We live in a fast-paced, disconnected world. Conflict resolution teaches kids three things: empathy, impulse control and emotional awareness. These skills will help them be more confident to talk themselves through situations which they thought they had to run from or fight over."
An online version of this release is available through the Office of News and Media Relations at: http://www.temple.edu/news_media/bb0404_594.html.
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