Two Parents Help Spread Awareness For

New Conflict Resolution Curriculum

By Jeff White

Bruce and Caty Berg, parents of a third-grade boy at Hawley School, support the district’s recently adopted conflict resolution curriculum, and have given $300 of their own money to further the curriculum’s implementation.

The Newtown Board of Education, which passed the curriculum in December in the wake of growing nationwide concerns over school safety and a formal statewide request from Governor John Rowland, accepted last week the Berg’s donation. It will be used to purchase visual aids for use in conflict management courses throughout the district.

“This is an important program that benefits the community,” Mrs Berg said this week. “My husband and I wanted to know how we could help. We are interested in security and conflict resolution as something that will promote child safety,” she added.

The curriculum that is currently in place is a strand, or unit, of the health curriculum for grades two, four and six. The district currently does not have the funds to stretch the curriculum from kindergarten to grade eight, which it eventually plans to do.

A committee comprised of school psychologists from all four elementary schools and the middle school, social workers, teachers and administrators designed the course. The curriculum, which has a minimum of 20 lessons, encompasses four broad themes for instruction: empathy, conflict resolution, impulse control and anger management.

Throughout the curriculum, students undergo lessons that help them identify other students’ feelings, effectively solve problems, seek options for various actions and manage angry feelings by channeling them into productive, nonviolent outlets.

Lesson plans center on a large amount of role playing, where students participate in fictitious situations and return to the larger group for class discussion. Fourth and sixth grade students make greater use of writing as a means of exploring their personal experiences. Reflective journal entries are required of students, as well as comprehensive end-of-the-year self-assessments.

Each lesson is subsidized by readings, mostly out of materials provided by the Second Step program, an intensive teacher training seminar in violence prevention that all instructors were required to take. Reading topics include standing up to peer pressure, embracing similarities and differences, and the different triggers for anger.

The curriculum was developed with early deterrence in mind. Whereas most school officials will agree that such a course would have its place in the high school, many conclude that it is even more important to reach students at the earliest possible age, when they are at their most impressionable. The earlier students start thinking about managing their feelings, school officials reason, the quicker it will become part of their development.

“Our schools, together in a partnership with your family, can provide our children with positive strategies for dealing with conflict,” Hawley School Principal Jo-Ann Peters wrote in her February newsletter to parents. Mrs Peters is the chairman of the conflict resolution curriculum committee.

For Bruce and Caty Berg, their involvement in the curriculum does not stop with publicly supporting it; rather, they hope to get a message out to other parents that part of the course needs to be taught in Newtown’s homes.

The money they donated to the district will be used to outfit each student who completes the course with a refrigerator magnet to be posted in their homes, listing various steps to effectively manage conflict. Moreover, the Bergs are attempting to distribute “A Family Guide to Second Step,” an instructional packet of parenting strategies that helps parents set solid examples for their children on how to control anger and impulses.

“Kids need to learn at home and school,” Mrs Berg said. “A child is going to be impulsive, so we have to show and model impulse control. If the children learn by the time they are five years old how to manage conflict, then they will master those skills.”

With the curriculum firmly in place since the beginning of January, the pilot program involving the second, fourth and sixth grades will have until the end of the school year to determine the effectiveness of the curriculum. It has not been decided when funding will become available to allow other grade levels to participate. For Bruce Berg, it would be money well spent.

“Kids need to learn that when there is a conflict, there are ways to resolve [it] with out turning up the volume and anger.”