Literature Helps To Teach Conflict Management Literature is a natural vehicle for teaching, observing and reinforcing conflict management concepts and skills. The book guides that follow were developed by classroom teachers enrolled in graduate Alternatives to Violence courses. They chose this vehicle as an integrating project to bring the skills of nonviolence back to their schools and classrooms. The chart may help you to select books that deal with specific skills that you want to teach, such as identifying causes of conflict or improving communication skills. The brief synopsis for each title will give you a thumbnail sketch of the story line so that you can choose books to address particular situations in your class. If you decide to select a book that is not included in the book guides, you may want to use the following procedure that is reprinted from Peace Is The Whole World Smiling, 1994, with permission of Colonial Hills School. 1. Stop reading at the point of conflict and ask, "What is the conflict? How do you think it will be resolved? How would you resolve it?" 2. Finish reading the story. Ask, "How was the conflict resolved? Was it like or unlike our suggestion? Was it an effective, win-win resolution? What would you have done differently?" 3. If the resolution presented is really terrible, have the students write new endings and display them on the bulletin board. **How conflicts are handled in books and how teachers in turn handle those books is a sensitive issue. There is a big difference between discussing alternate endings with kids and changing the ending of a book yourself. The former is an exercise in creativity and critical thinking; the latter could be seen as censorship. If there are issues that disturb a teacher, it seems better to confront the issues with the children. For example, if a book is sexist, the teacher could have the children identify the elements that make it sexist. The children could be asked how they would change it and then ask, "Why does it make a difference?" CURRICULUM INDEX
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