Peacemakers: Teaching Students to Resolve Their Own and Schoolmates' Conflicts

Schools are filled with conflicts. Considerable instructional, administrative, and learning efforts are lost because students and faculty often manage their conflicts poorly. The frequency and severity of conflicts seem to be increasing, and for the first time, the category "fighting, violence, and gangs" is tied with "lack of discipline" for the number-one problem confronting local public schools (Elam, Rose, & Gallup, 1994). Conflicts will not go away. Students are clearly fascinated by and drawn to conflicts. They like to start them, watch them, hear about them, and discuss them. To make schools orderly and peaceful places in which high quality education can take place, conflicts must be managed constructively without physical or verbal violence. To do so, students must be taught to be peacemakers.