October 8, 1999

Reading, 'Riting, and Resolving Conflict Creatively Program

Three Rs for a successful school experience

The New Orleans Resolving Conflict Creatively Program, operated out of Loyola's Twomey Center for Peace Through Justice, is sponsoring a peer mediation training this semester for 320 students, 3rd to 12th grade, representing eight Orleans Parish schools. Those schools are: Myrtle Banks, William J. Guste, Langston Hughes, Laurel Elementary, New Orleans Free School, Carter G. Woodson Middle School, Alcee Fortier High School, and Joseph S. Clark SeniorHigh School.

The training will give students the ability to resolve lower-level disputes among their peers and reduce suspension and expulsion rates in those partner schools. Students attending the training will learn leadership skills, conflict analysis, active listening skills, learn to de-escalate conflict in themselves and others, feelings and anger management, as well as the benefits of team work.

This is the second year that Safe and Drug Free Schools and Communities Act Program and the New Orleans Resolving Conflict Creatively Program have partnered to offer the training to the students and faculty of New Orleans public schools.Preliminary evaluations of last year's efforts have been positive, proving that children from different schools can and do work together toward a larger goal, reducing ward, school, and community conflict.

Trish Moser, Assistant Director of Alumni Relations and Public Relations