Peace breaks out

Teaching Pre K-8, Feb 1998 by Elliot, Ian

Teaching K-8 pays a visit to a K-6 school, where every day is a good day to discourage violence

We were still a block away from the Jesse G. Sanchez School in Salinas, California, when we got our first taste of the PeaceBuilders program in action. A sharpeyed member of the Teaching K-8 team, drawing on her many years of experience as a classroom teacher, spotted it right away.

"See those boys over there?" she said, indicating several groups of students on their way to school. "They're not grabbing bookbags or running into each other. They're just walking peacefully."

Nothing earthshaking about that, of course; nevertheless, it's typical of what's been going on in Salinas for the past two years. No, Salinas is not one big, ever-so-peaceful community, but it's getting there, thanks to PeaceBuilders.

Background. Teaching K-8 was in Salinas recently to find out more about PeaceBuilders and how it works in a K-6 school. Our first stop was the central office of the Alisal Union School District, where we spoke with Roberta Emmerson, the district's curriculum director. Since Roberta plays a leading role in implementing the program in the district's seven elementary schools (with a total of over 6,000 students), she was able to provide us with some much-needed background.

Sanchez School, she told us, is located in a low socio-economic area. The student body is about 96 percent Spanishspeaking with about 80 percent of the students classified as "limited Englishspeaking." This means they speak almost no English when they enter school.

To make matters even more challenging for Sanchez educators, many of the students are children of migrant workers. The youngsters leave town (and school) with their families when crops need to be harvested elsewhere, and are gone for many weeks at a time.

It's a serious problem if ever there was one, but it's not the school district's only serious problem. There's also the problem of violence around the schools.

"In this area of Salinas," Roberta said, "we've had a lot of problems with rival gangs the North gangs and the South gangs - who wear clothing and certain colors that identify them. We've had a lot of shootings and a lot of school violence.

"The community knew it had to do something about the problem and so it worked hard to clean up a dangerous part of town, and to get neighbors to know each other and combat violence.

"PeaceBuilders got the schools involved. We recognized that we had to intervene early. It's too late to wait until middle school and junior high, and so PeaceBuilders was put into effect in all seven elementary schools during the 1995-96 school year."

Successful? No doubt about it. On the community level, negative behavior (including violence) is down significantly all across the board. Other communities plagued by the same problem now regard Salinas and PeaceBuilders as helpful models. And in 1996, President Clinton visited Salinas to praise the community's efforts of "fighting crime and rescuing children."

PeaceBuilders has been no less successful in the district's elementary schools. A survey taken at the end of the program's first year showed the following reductions in negative behavior: disciplinary actions by 49%; serious violence episodes by 59%; tardiness by 20%; absences by 31%; vandalism incidents by 61%; and vandalism costs by 61%.

Getting started. The PeaceBuilders program was created by Dr. Dennis Embry of Tucson, Arizona, who played a major role in getting the Salinas program off the ground by conducting inservice sessions for all teachers and non-teaching staff in the district.

Four basic principles are at the heart of the program: 1) Praise people; 2) Give up putdowns; 3) Notice hurts and right wrongs; and 4) Seek wise people.

"They're very simple principles," Roberta pointed out. "The program is not so much a curriculum as a way of life. If it's going to be successful in the schools - or anywhere, for that matter - it has to be modeled by adults. It's not going to work in the classroom if the teacher doesn't buy into it Actually, most of our teachers have been really comfortable with it"

Judging from the decor in all of the classrooms at Sanchez school, "comfortable" may be the understatement of the year. PeaceBuilders posters in English and in Spanish, were on every classroom wall - and that's just the start of it. Here are a few more reminders that PeaceBuilders is alive and well at Sanchez:

Teaching a peace pledge in sign language.

PeaceBuilders boards, where children can write peace notes to one another.

PeaceBuilders buttons and T-shirts.

Monday morning assemblies, where the school acknowledges PeaceBuilders of the Week in front of the student body. Example: A student on his way to school noticed that a driver was pushing his car at a busy intersection. The boy put his books down on the corner and helped push the car out of the intersection. (Salinas police officers also recognize the program by issuing citations when they see students doing something helpful; the citations can be exchanged for a free video at the video store.)