Resolving Conflict
with
Linda Lantieri
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A: We need to address the fact that young people are coming to school more angry and frightened and depressed and impulsive than they ever have before.
Paying attention only to their intellectual competence is really selling students only half the goods in terms of their potential success, both in their personal lives as well as their work lives. When schools educate the heart along with the mind successfully, the two enhance each other greatly.
Q: That kind of education would make a huge difference, so why isn't it happening? What is the resistance?
A: First, we operate in this society on a crisis and punishment paradigm rather than a prevention and promotion paradigm. We spend money on young people when they get in trouble but not enough on prevention and health promotion.
10 Reasons for Mediation Programs an interesting, brief list, provided by the Office of Prevention, Texas Youth Commission.
Waging Peace in Our Schools
by Lantieri Linda & Janet Patti
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Beacon Press, September 1996
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ISBN: 080703116X
Finally, good examples of social-emotional learning programs in schools are still the exception rather than the norm. We need more examples before we have a new vision of how to redefine an educated person in this country to include social, emotional, and ethical development.
Q: Linda, if you could have one wish granted, what would you do?
A: I would fully reorder the priorities of our country to really invest in our children. We should be willing to sooner guarantee them a college education than a prison cell. We should reconsider spending 30 million dollars in an hour on national security, and instead pay for a comprehensive social-emotional program in 600 schools for an entire year. We also need to create in-service, pre-service and graduate studies in the area of social-emotional learning so that we can create a whole new vision of how we educate children.
If we do that, we may have a chance in reclaiming our soul as a society and as a country.
Q: So you are talking about working with the teachers, working with the children, working with the parents.
A: Exactly. Really exposing people to this work in ways that enable them to put social-emotional learning into their active repertoire. Two days of training is not enough. We visit every teacher ten times in their classroom after they receive a 25 hour experience with us. Our model is a 3 to 5 year process before we feel folks can do this completely on their own.
Q: Are you optimistic or pessimistic about where we are going?
A: I feel very optimistic. RCCP has been instrumental in helping 150,000 young people who are empowered with skills and are actively engaged in making their schools, their homes and their communities places of nurturing, caring and safety. Their words inspire me:
- Calvin: Through RCCP “It started to be cool to settle things without fighting.”
- Tiffany: “Peace is a commitment of the consciousness and heart. You have to be devoted to it... don’t give up.”
- Tiffany: “Peace is a commitment of the consciousness and heart. You have to be devoted to it... don’t give up.”
Q: What might be a first step for people who don’t have a lot of resources, or money, who wish to make a difference in their school or their community?
A: First, organize with others to create that web of support. Then become knowledgeable and aware of the whole area of social-emotional learning — both the theoretical framework and the practical ways this can be brought into the schools and other educational settings.
Get people from the sheriff to the judge to the superintendent of schools to the health commissioner in the same room to create a level of communication dedicated to putting children first in their community.
Q: How do you think your book, Waging Peace in Our Schools, relates to the recent tragedy in Jonesboro?
A: There are many myths alive and well around the Jonesboro issue. One myth is that we should be surprised at this kind of violence; given a society that glamorizes violence and that offers violence as the hero’s choice, it doesn’t surprise me that such an act, as hideous as it is, could happen. Clearly we are not seeing some of the issues that young people are experiencing and facing.
The second myth is that violence only happens in inner cities. Violence is America’s problem.
The third myth I observed is that the people involved felt that there was nothing they really could have done. I believe there are a lot of things that could have been done: It would have helped to have a culture of nonviolence in the student’s home, school, and community through a comprehensive social-emotional learning program. These young people also reached out to express what they were feeling to several people. With training, those messages — from bullying, to telling friends what they were going to do — would not go unheard. As one young boy in our program said, “If this happened in our school, I’d say, ‘Brother, you’re really angry. Tell me more about why you would want to blow somebody up tomorrow.’ And then I would tell a few adults that knew this kid and cared about him right away.”
Q: Do you have a personal experience that led you to this awareness about the importance of waging peace through emotional intelligence?
A: Early on in my teaching career in Harlem in the 60’s, there was a safety net for young people. By the time I was an administrator in the 70’s I saw that safety net beginning to really dissolve. Communities, schools, and homes are not as responsive in creating that circle of caring that young people need to grow up whole.
Deciding to leave the New York Public Schools after many years and to do this work at the national level really was sparked by the tragedy of one of the principals who began this work with me. Pat Daly was killed in the cross-fire of a drug deal gone sour when he followed a distraught child out of the school. I realized that although we had created a safe haven in his school in the middle of Red Hook, Brooklyn, we had not in any way affected three blocks away where he was killed. It became very clear to me that we weren’t doing this work with the urgency and speed that it needed to be done. Each of us has a role to play.