BEING A PEACE GAMES VOLUNTEER
by Lisa Graustein
Seven years ago, Francelia Butler, a professor of children's literature at the University of Connecticut, created Peace Games. Upset by the violent world that she saw the next generation of children about to inherit, Butler believed that just as children learn how to be violent they can learn how to be peaceful.
Originally, Peace Games was a program to help children create cooperative, peaceful games to play with their peers. Today, Peace Games is a year-long conflict resolution and violence prevention program for 3,000 first through eighth graders throughout the greater Boston area. Every week, 250 volunteers from Lesley and other area colleges, as well as community volunteers, go into the nine public and parochial schools that hold Peace Games.
What is it like to be a Peace Games volunteer?
When I arrive at my designated classroom with my two co-teachers, Marc and Angie, the students greet us excitedly, because they had a lot of fun when we visited last week. Angie had dressed in crazily mis-matched clothing, as a way of opening a discussion about stereotypes and the judgments people make from the way a person looks.
Marc starts today's lesson with a quick review of last week's discussion. I quietly interrupt Marc and take over the review. Annoyed, Marc silences me and jumps back into the review. This is not how we planned it and I am fuming. We quickly get into a heated argument over who should now be teaching the lesson. A few students are arguing on my behalf, while Marc pleads his case to some other students. Many of the students watch in confusion -- teachers aren't supposed to fight like this.
Finally, Angie yells "Freeze!" and Marc and I smile at each other. The class slowly realizes that what they just saw was not a real fight, but rather a skit that their Peace Games teachers had put on for them. For the rest of the lesson, the students will discuss what they saw and map out the escalation of a conflict. Later in the lesson, the students will stage their own fake fights, learning how different actions and influences can cause a conflict to quickly escalate into a potentially violent fight.
In the lessons of the following weeks, we will work with the students to develop steps for calming down and resolving conflicts. Through games and skits they will practice cooperating and communicating effectively with each other. The students will also have the chance to talk about the violence they face in their daily lives and some options for dealing with it. As a class, the kids will then make a plan to use what they have learned, creating a community service project for within their own school.
Peace Games has been an invaluable experience for me. I've learned to see violence in the community through my students' eyes, which has changed my perception of their neighborhoods and of the greater Boston community. And, a month after I started teaching Peace Games, several students came to us to seek help to resolve a conflict -- a tremendous step toward learning the skills of peacemaking.
