Listen, be curious, be generous and try to be friends again
At first glance, handling conflict well appears to be pretty straightforward. CRESST offers this summary in our Young Peacemakers Project lessons for Y5 and Y6: listen, be curious, be generous and try to be friends again.
But anyone who has ever been angry or upset with a friend or family member knows that it can be hard to keep listening when you don’t like what the other person has to say. We don’t always feel like being curious about their perspective when it’s different from ours. If we’re feeling hurt by someone else’s words or actions, it can be difficult to be generous. And all of these challenges can block our willingness to try and be friends again.
Peer mediators are trained to help other children overcome these challenges. They can enable people to maintain friendships by understanding what’s happened in a falling out and work out together how they’d like to move on from it. For a peer mediation scheme to work, it’s important that the whole school unites with supporting positive ways to handle conflict well.
Everyone can learn about handling conflict well
At the moment, schools aren’t able to offer peer mediation because of the constraints of lockdown and operating in bubbles. CRESST is looking forward to the time when this work will be possible again, and we’ve used the time to review and develop our lessons on understanding conflict. When CRESST works with a school to train mediators, we always take a whole school approach, offering training to teachers, governors, support staff and parents, as well as to the pupils themselves.
Our introductory lessons for Y5 and Y6 introduce skills and knowledge for handling conflict well, including:
- Understanding conflict and knowing more about your emotions
- How conflict escalates
- Different responses to conflict
- Listening skills
- Questioning skills
New lessons, new activities, new opportunities
Providing these lessons to a year group, and associated training for adults, offers the chance for everyone to gain more understanding about how to listen, be curious, be generous and try to be friends again. It’s the first step in setting up a peer mediation scheme. After the lessons some children are selected to have the extra training to learn how to be a peer mediator, to bring people together to sort out everyday conflicts.
We’re excited about our updated and revised lesson plans. We’re looking forward to getting back into schools again. Until that’s possible we’re sharing many of our resources for free and finding new ways to offer support and information in different ways. Have a look on our website to find out more or follow us on Twitter to be the first to know about new opportunities.
For nearly twenty years, CRESST has been working with schools, developing practical models to enable children, young people and adults to manage conflict constructively. If you’d like to get our regular update on Handling conflict well, why not join our mailing list? You can sign up here.
