Support / Development / Training

Recommendations for Productive Implementation

The mission of PRL is to provide comprehensive character education and conflict resolution services that engage school communities in the practice of promoting social competence and peaceful positive conflict resolution. The following recommendations provide a framework for defining comprehensive programming:

• The buildings that are implementing PRL programs must make a multi – year commitment to addressing youth violence as a complex problem that requires long term preventative programming.
• An emphasis must be placed on early intervention beginning with the Pre-K and Kindergarten classrooms receiving Peaceful People instruction and sustaining throughout the elementary experience.
• Peaceful People instruction must be implemented in all classrooms within the building with a commitment to allowing the trainers to present 9-12 lessons per year. This allows skills to be taught and reinforced at each grade level, using a consistent problem solving approach.
• Teacher participation – the skills and strategies presented are most effective when reinforced by the classroom teacher. PRL can provide follow up activities and curriculum supports; however administration needs to set the expectation that the program be reinforced.
• Adaptation – PRL Programming can be adapted to meet the cultural and developmental appropriateness of a classroom or building. We rely on the recommendations of teachers to alert us of particular issues or areas of sensitivity that may not be easily observed.
• Principal’s Orientation – strong administrative support of the programming is necessary to the implementation of programming. PRL recommends that principal’s should participate in an orientation that provides a clear and complete overview of how the programming contributes to the school environment. Often principal’s see the programming as “entertainment” rather than instruction. Providing them with an opportunity to review the curriculum and its links with state standards will help principals to see programming as valuable to meeting the academic standards.
• Adequate Training – effective implementation requires staff development. Teachers and administrators cannot effectively use the services provided if they do not understand what they are. Administrators and teachers in each building must be trained in the mediation process so that they can effectively integrate it into the building response plan. Students should not be trained until a building fully understands how to use mediation.
• Space – PRL Program Coordinators need a semi-private location to be designated for mediation to be conducted and for individual social skills sessions and group meetings to be held. We acknowledge that space is at a premium, but we believe that creative solutions are possible.
• Participation in appropriate building level teams. PRL staff strive to make meaningful connections between building initiatives and PRL Programming. By design PRL Programming can be linked to support initiatives such as PBIS (Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports), Community of Caring, LifeSkills or others. Through participation on building teams the common themes of these programs can be identified, integrated and enhanced.
• Parental Engagement is a vital element to program effectiveness. It is important that PRL contribute articles to newsletters, participate in open house and offer opportunities for parents to be involved in programming. Over the last 2 years PRL has internally committed to developing tools and strategies for reaching out to parents. As a result PRL has developed parent newsletters to accompany Peaceful People lesson plans.
• To accomplish this work we have found that a minimum of 3 days of service per week are required to adequately service a building with 20-22 classrooms. Larger buildings (24 classes or more) may require additional days of service. Reduction in service has a multiplicity effect in that reducing services from 3 days to 2 days is not a reduction of 1/3 as it appears, but is a reduction of stability. To clarify when a Program Coordinator is on a T/Th schedule the gap between Thursday and Tuesday obstructs the use of services. Administrators will not consistently use a program because they feel they can’t count on it, they view that they must wait too many days. This is compounded when a student is suspended as the window of opportunity for working with the student narrows even further.

Peaceful Schools Program Coordinator can be hired to conduct Comprehensive Implementation – The costs for providing a program coordinator are calculated based on an hourly rate and are dependent on variables such as the quantity and duration of services requested. We are committed to providing services at a fair price and will work with districts to provide a scope of service and budget proposal for specific programming requests.