Unit
1
Discussing
Conflict: Introduction to Peace by Peace
Goals:
The students will…
- Be introduced to their Peace by Peace teachers and Peace by Peace.
- Become interested in Peace by Peace.
- Distinguish between a “fight” and a “conflict.”
- See that conflicts have causes and consequences.
- See that the consequences (results) of a conflict are often also causes.
- See how escalation and de-escalation work.
- Understand that personal decisions affect which direction you move on the escalation staircase.
- Discuss why people fight.
- Create community rules.
- Think about the relevance of Peace by Peace to their own lives.
- Accomplish the personal goal for your classroom for today:________________________ ________________________________________________________________________
The volunteers will…
- Get to know the students.
- Think about and understand the causes and effects of conflict.
Materials:
- Nametags.
- Posterboard.
Methods:
I. Opening Activity: Engage the Students: Fake Fight/Introduction (10 minutes)
II. Brainstorm About Conflicts: The Name Game (10 minutes)
III. Discussing Conflict: Conflict Tree and Conflict Staircase (10-15 minutes)
IV. Example of De-escalation: Cooperation: Human Pretzel and Community Rules (20 minutes)
V. Closing Activity: Thinking about Conflict: Silent Quiz (5 minutes)
Preparation:
- Read through this lesson completely.
- Create nametags (blank if you don’t know your student’s names yet).
- Get posterboard.
- Familiarize yourself with:
- the difference between “conflict” and “fight”
- the meanings of “escalator” and “de-escalator”
- the conflict tree and the conflict staircase
- Create a script for the fake fight and practice it.
I. Opening
Activity: Engage the Students: Fake Fight/Introduction
(estimated time: 10 minutes)
Volunteer Leading this activity
_________________________________________
Estimated time for your class to complete this activity _______________________
Activity Goals:
- Engage the students in Peace by Peace
- Introduce ourselves and Peace by Peace
- Distinguish between a fight and a conflict
The activity begins as if you are introducing yourself, and then turns into a fight. After you break character, finish your introductions. Follow that with a discussion and brainstorm session.
- Begin as if introducing Peace by Peace.
- For
example, “Hi. My name is ___ and
this is ___ . We’re students at
Yale and we’re going to come into your class this year every week to talk
about some things that are really important in your lives and in
ours. We’d like to start with an
activity to show you what we’re all about. ___ will tell you what to do.”
- At this point, act out an argument.
- For
example, teachers often use an argument concerning who is supposed to
lead the next part of the lesson.
- Try to include as many of the following as possible in your fake fight:
- Accusations
- Escalation to insults
- Interrupting
- Name calling
- Lying
- Talking at the same time
- Disrespect
- Yelling
- Spilling secrets
- Physical threat or one teacher storming out of the room
- After the physical threat or a teacher storming out of the room (or both), break character and discuss what just happened.
- Finish introducing yourself. Tell the students:
- Tell the students that you’re from Peace by Peace and that throughout the year you’re going to be talking about fights and other conflicts and ways to resolve them without violence.
- Tell the students that as a reward for their hard work, we host a Festival for them in the spring.
- During the festival, all the students from all the Peace by Peace classes in New Haven come to Yale for the day. They go through really fun workshops put on by different Yale groups like sports teams and dance groups. The students will find out much more about the Festival in the spring.
- Ask the students to tell you exactly what happened during your fake fight. Write everything they come up with on the board in the form of a brainstorm list.
- They
should identify elements like lying, insults, threats, accusations,
anger, tone of voice, fear, self-esteem, etc.
- Make sure to distinguish between a fight and a conflict by asking the students for definitions. Basically, a fight is a conflict that gets out of control.
- A conflict happens when two people are in opposition or when they differ.
- A fight is a quarrel, an argument, or an attempt to harm or gain power over someone by blows (emotional or physical).
- Once the students are out of ideas, tell that that you’re going to do some general brainstorming about conflicts in the form of the Name Game.
II. Brainstorm
about Conflicts: The Name Game
(estimated time: 10 minutes)
Volunteer Leading this activity
_________________________________________
Estimated time for your class to complete this activity _______________________
Activity Goals:
- Come up with a list of words relating to conflict, including escalators and de-escalators.
- Get to know the students’ names.
Hand out nametags before or during this activity.
- You can make table tent nametags by folding a piece of paper in half, then folding down one corner of the side with the fold (the part that was originally the middle of the paper). That becomes the top of the nametag (the other end sits on the desk). This method will allow the nametags to stand up on the student’s desks.
This is a simple version of the traditional Name Game, but students do not repeat what all the previous students have said (because of time restraints).
Ask the students to go around the circle and tell you their name and the first thing that comes to mind when they think about conflict. They should not repeat something that was already said.
Encourage the students to get ideas from the fake fight or from fights they have recently seen or been involved with. Give them a few examples of words that have to do with conflict before you begin, like yelling, body language, and insults.
After each students’ response, add what they said to the brainstorm list you have from the Opening Activity.
Note: The importance of learning the
students’ names cannot be emphasized enough.
Take several weeks and actively try to learn their names – it will be
invaluable to your relationship with the students and your success as a Peace
by Peace teacher. Knowing a student’s name
shows that you care about them.
III. Discussing Conflict: Conflict Tree and Conflict Staircase
(estimated time: 10-15 minutes)
Volunteer Leading this activity
_________________________________________
Estimated time for your class to complete this activity _______________________
Activity Goals:
- Show that conflicts have causes and consequences.
- Show that the consequences (results) of a conflict are often also causes.
- Show how escalation and de-escalation work.
- Show that personal decisions affect which direction you move on the conflict staircase.
- Discuss why people fight.
Note:
The issues of this discussion are the basis of the Peace by Peace
program. Take your time and make sure
the students understand these difficult concepts. Also, make sure to remind them week after week about the
definitions of escalation and de-escalation – these are very big words for 6th
graders, but they are all capable of understanding them and remembering what
they mean.
You will be using the brainstorm list that the students came up with in the last two activities as the basis for this discussion.
CONFLICT TREE
- Draw a tree on the blackboard. Label the roots “causes” and the branches “results”.
-
(Should you choose to discuss it, the trunk can be labeled “types”. Some types of conflict are conflict between two people, between communities, between countries, within an individual, in a family, nonviolent, violent, etc.)
- Explain to the students:
- Conflicts have causes, which often make a small issue grow larger.
- Conflicts also have results or effects.
- Ask the students
- What is an example of a time that you got into a conflict over a minor issue, but it grew into a much larger one? Make sure to identify the causes and the effects.
- Which words on the list we made are causes of conflict?
- Make an X next to each one.
- Which words on the list are effects, or results of conflict?
- Make a check mark next to each result.
- The students should find that some words belong on both the causes and the results lists. Make the point that sometimes the results of a conflict are also causes of new conflict. In this way, a conflict can grow from a little issue into a bigger issue, and can even turn into a fight.
To show them this another way:
- Draw a staircase and a little person in the middle of the staircase. Define the words “escalator” and “de-escalator”:
- An escalator is something a person does that makes a conflict worse.
- A de-escalator is something a person does that makes a conflict better.
· The person on the staircase is in a conflict: they are on the conflict-staircase. If they have a knife, that is an escalator and it makes the conflict worse, so the conflict grows and they move up the staircase. But if that person instead apologizes for something they know they did wrong, then that is a de-escalator and it makes the conflict better and the person moves down the staircase. The goal is to get off the staircase from the bottom and end the conflict.
· We saw before that results of conflicts (like violence, anger) are often causes of new conflict; this is because they are escalators, which make a conflict worse.
·
Make the point that personal decisions determine
whether you make the conflict better or worse, and whether you move up or down
the staircase.
Relate the staircase to the fake fight: have the students tell what happened, which decisions were made, and what could have happened if different decisions had been made.
Ask the students for some other examples of escalators and de-escalators. Try to get the students to come up with as many of these as possible by asking appropriate questions; tell the students important ones that they miss (* for ones that are not as obvious):
- Escalators
- Fear
- *Peer pressure
- Weapons
- Pride
- *Tone of voice
- *Facial expressions
- Drugs
- Alcohol
- Self-esteem
- Bad communication
- Body language
- Being close to the other person (in their face)
- Anger
- De-escalators
- Listening
- *Tone of voice
- *Facial expressions
- Compromise
- Letting the other person speak
- *Relaxing
- Thinking from the other person’s point of view
- *Respect
- Not telling the other person that they are “wrong”
Tell the students that throughout the rest of the year in Peace by Peace, you’re going to talk a lot about these different de-escalators (ways to make the conflict better). You’re not here to lecture them about not fighting – that’s a decision they will have to make for themselves. You’re here just to get them thinking about what decisions they are making and whether the consequences or results are what they really wanted. First, here are some questions for them:
- Are conflicts always between two individuals?
- No,
there are conflicts between two communities, between individuals and the
community, etc.
- Is a conflict always bad?
- No. When people disagree, that’s how
change happens. Friend can get to
know each other better; friendships and families can get stronger. People can look at the world a
different way.
- It is only when a conflict turns into a fight that it is bad.
- What are some reasons that people fight?
- Money,
power, territory, religion, pride, hate, habit, politics, etc.
- What role does anger have in conflicts? Are there any constructive uses of anger?
- When
people are angry and are unable to control it, a conflict turns
into a fight.
Now that they understand escalation and de-escalation, you’re going to look at one example of de-escalation: cooperation.
IV. Example of
De-escalation: Cooperation: The Human
Pretzel and Community Rules
(estimated time: 20 minutes)
Volunteer Leading this activity
_________________________________________
Estimated time for your class to complete this activity _______________________
Activity Goals:
- Engage the students in Peace by Peace.
- Discuss one important de-escalator.
- Come up with Community Rules.
This is a great game to illustrate working together. The students usually love it, so after they’ve played it once, it also works well as a reward for good behavior later on in the year if you have extra time. Because cooperation is essential to most other de-escalators, it is a fundamental concept.
After giving instructions, divide the class up into 2 or 3 groups of 8-10 students.
- The students will stand in a circle in their group.
- Each student should grab two other hands in the circle.
- The students must not grab the hand of the person next to them, or two hands from the same person if this activity is to work.
- The group should untangle themselves without letting go of any hands.
- Optional if you have time: try doing the same activity without talking.
Follow the activity with a discussion.
- Note: students often blame other students by name for what went wrong with the game. If this happens, please ask them to comment only on their own behavior or the behavior of the group as a whole.
- Did this work in your group? Why or why not?
- What was hard about this activity?
- What made this activity work in your group? (Or, if it didn’t work, what could you have done?)
- Communication
- Cooperation
- Note: these are big words for some 6th graders, but they are important ones to learn. Feel free to give them the word “communication” or “cooperation” if they answer “talk about it” or “we had to work together”.)
- What does communication have to do with conflict? What does cooperation have to do with conflicts?
- What happens if people don’t cooperate?
Tell the students that because it is really important that people cooperate with each other, they should come up with some Community Rules; ask them to think, not just to regurgitate their regular classroom rules (all of which still apply during Peace by Peace). Some examples of what they might come up with are:
- Respect everyone.
- Don’t touch/hit other people, and never in role playing either.
- Don’t swear.
- Don’t talk about things said within Peace by Peace outside of this classroom.
- One person should talk at a time; raise hands.
Write the rules on the posterboard you brought with you (preferably taped to the board) and bring this poster with you each time you come in to the classroom.
V. Closing
Activity: Thinking about Conflict: Silent Quiz
(estimated time: 5 minutes)
Volunteer Leading this activity
_________________________________________
Estimated time for your class to complete this activity _______________________
Activity Goals:
- Remind the students of what they have learned.
- Get the students thinking about the relevance of Peace by Peace to their own lives.
Tell the students that you just covered a lot of information and you want to review for a minute all the things they learned.
- As for definitions of conflict, fight, escalator, and de-escalator.
- Ask what the point of the conflict tree was.
- To
show that conflicts have causes and results.
- Ask what the conflict staircase showed.
- That
the results of a conflict are often causes of new conflicts, so little
issues can escalate into big fights.
Now, before the students leave, you want to get them thinking about conflict in their own life. You are going to ask them questions and have them answer them silently in their heads. Stress that these should not be answered out loud.
Read the students the questions, allowing about 5 seconds in between to think about the answers.
Silent Quiz Questions
a. Have you ever been in a fight?
b. Have you ever wanted to hit anyone?
c. Have you ever hit anyone?
d. Have you ever yelled at anyone in your family?
e. Have you ever stopped a fight?
f. Have you ever seen a fight but not stopped it?
g. Did you want to stop it?
h. Have you ever been upset because of a fight?
i. Have you ever been hurt in a fight?
j. Have you ever regretted getting into a fight?
k. Have you ever felt pressured by your peers to fight?
BEFORE YOU GO:
- After the class is dismissed, ask the classroom teacher how the lesson went and for suggestions for next week.
- Tell the classroom teacher when you will be back next.
- Make notes for yourself on how the lesson went.