Contact: Wendy Leopold [email protected]
An unusual anti-violence initiative at a suburban Chicago high school aims to decrease violence not only at the high school but in the communities in which the students reside as well. By introducing conflict resolution to the parents of students in addition to students, teachers and school staff, the Peaceable Schools Initiative goes beyond typical school anti-violence efforts such as peer mediation or the formation of student/faculty conflict resolution teams.
Developed by the Family Institute at Northwestern University for Lyons Township High School, the Peaceable Schools Initiative seeks at its broadest level to change the climate of the 3,000-student, west suburban high school. To do so, the school has introduced methods of anger and conflict management, provided alternatives to suspension, developed student leadership councils that include leaders from all subgroups (athletes and student council types, skateboarders and computer jocks, etc), integrated conflict resolution into the academic curricula and established a community advisory board of parents, community members and high school faculty and staff
One of the hallmarks of Peaceable Schools is the involvement of parents. Students suspended from LTHS for incidents of violence (such as fighting, threatening a teacher, or verbal abuse) have been given the opportunity to reduce their suspensions by agreeing to undergo seven hours of conflict resolution training with their parents. At the end of the sessions, the students sign a document outlining what they have learned and how they will implement it to avoid fighting in the future.
In addition, the Peaceable Schools Initiative focuses on student inclusivity. By ensuring that students from all the school's subgroups are represented in a leadership council, the school hopes to minimize distrust between the high school's many social groups.
"A big benefit for suspended students and parents who go through the training is the feeling that they're not being abandoned by the school," says Doug Breunlin, a family therapist at the Family Institute at Northwestern University and primary architect of the Peaceable Schools Initiative. Conflict styles often reflect what goes on in a family. Parents and children benefit by getting an identical message about resolving conflict and managing anger.
Although the research is not yet finalized on the success of the suspension alternative program, reports from parents and children are positive. "Parents feel good about the conflict resolution training because they feel more involved, more in control and better able to deal with the stress of raising adolescents," says Breunlin. Calling it training, he adds, is "a way to give parents and teens four sessions of what otherwise looks very much like family therapy."
Lyons Township High School Superintendent Dennis Kelly says that teachers -- "particularly younger ones who are still adding to their teacher bag of tricks" -- report that conflict resolution training improves their own ability to work with difficult students. And Kelly says the conflict resolution alternative boasts a near-perfect success rate. None of the approximately 30 students who went through the Family Institute training in the 1997-98 year received a repeat suspension.
The recognition that an alternative to suspension was needed arose when administrators at LTHS looked at the school's suspension rate and the impact that suspension has on students' school success. Not surprisingly, suspended students often have difficulty making up the work they miss, fall behind in their studies and feel less connected than ever to school.
"Society at large wants easy solutions and to somehow get rid of people who create problems. But 16- and 17-year-olds don't go away. What five or more days of suspension does is to make kids incredibly angry and disconnected and at greater risk to drop out," says Kelly.
Breunlin, a Lyons Township parent who in his practice as a therapist again and again runs up against the constraints of school systems when working with families with teens, agrees with Kelly. "Many schools send an unspoken message that they want 'troublemakers' out of the high school," says Breunlin. "When kids pick up on that message, they disengage from school, stop caring, and drop out by junior or senior year."
The idea of Peaceable Schools is to get all students -- not only students in the academic top 25 percent -- to feel invested in the life of their school. To help ensure that student problems or concerns are not overlooked, LTHS has developed an "advisory system" (rather like the old homeroom) in which the same faculty member serves as an advocate for a student over the course of the student's four years in the school.
Among other things, the weekly advisory period is used to promote diversity awareness, social skills training, personal and academic goal-setting, and conflict resolution training. The advisory period, says Kelly, is the proverbial "port in the storm that offers another way to give support to our students."
Using grant money, the school has developed a student conflict resolution team to infuse the student body with a greater awareness of the goals of the Peaceable Schools Initiative. Workshops for teachers have been given to help teachers develop natural ways in which conflict resolution can be integrated in the academic curriculum. To do so, says Kelly, underscores the school's belief that conflict resolution principles are not an aside in the educational process.
If students are studying a piece of literature or discussing land treaties between Native Americans and the U.S. government, for example, there are ways to focus the dialogue on conflict and negotiation.
As a former high school principal, Kelly knows from experience that conflict is inevitable and that learning ways to resolve conflict are essential. " "There's no way you can get three people together -- let along 3,000 teenagers --and not have conflict. That's why it's so important to give students the skills to resolve their differences peacefully."
The Peaceable Schools Initiative preceded the high school killings in Jonesboro, Springfield and Littleton and are not a response to those tragic events. "The anti-violence message we're sending at LTHS is for all children, not for that potential loner that's carrying the high powered rifle. I may be cynical but I don't believe there are school programs that can deal with that kind of behavior."
What the Lyons Township High School supervisor does hope to create is a school culture that makes it clear that you don't need to fight, lose your temper or use obscenities or violence to get your point across. "Instead," says the former principal, "we're going to see students who understand that there are better ways of handling conflict and who know how to use them."
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