Peacebuilding for Safe and Inclusive Schools

Peacebuilding for Safe and Inclusive Schools

Dr. Tina Owen-Moore, Superintendent of School District of Cudahy (WI)

?Dr. Tina Owen-Moore is the Superintendent of Wisconsin’s School District of Cudahy. Previously, she founded The Alliance School, the first school in the nation with the explicit mission of reducing bullying. She is the author of “The Alliance Way: The Making of a Bully-Free School”.

?To build safe and inclusive schools, we need peace. But how is this achieved? The United Nations discusses three types of peace: peacekeeping, peacemaking, and peacebuilding. In education, we often focus our attention on peacekeeping and peacemaking. Peacekeeping is how we protect harm from happening, and peacemaking is how we address harm after it occurs. But what if instead, we focused on peacebuilding?

Peacebuilding means building a culture so strong that people do not want to cause harm to one another. Peacebuilding is about fostering relationships between people across different groups and identities.

Through building a research-based infrastructure, constructing shared leadership experiences, and providing choice, superintendents can serve as peacebuilders to create safe and inclusive schools.

Build Research-Based Infrastructure

Building peace begins by making research informed decisions. In my former role as principal at The Alliance School, we started our journey by examining research about what changes outcomes with regards to bullying. We spent significant time and effort analyzing the findings to build a model for our school.

For example, we implemented block scheduling in the classroom for building connections, sharing stories, and learning collaboratively. By spending more time in the classroom together, students got to know each other better, which yielded stronger relationships and greater trust.

Peacebuilding also involves connecting with the community beyond the limits of the school. So, we trained teachers in service learning to provide students with experiential opportunities to serve the community. Building these relationships is key to peacebuilding as you can tell the health of a school by the way it cares for the community, and vice versa. ?

The Dalai Lama said, “If you can see yourself in others, whom can you harm?” Create opportunities for school leaders, teachers, and students to see themselves in one another.

Shared storytelling, restorative circles, and open dialogue offer new perspectives and understandings of one another. Learning to listen and respect one another is an important foundation for building peace.

Construct Shared Leadership Experiences

Leadership can and should function democratically. Democratic leadership stems from the belief that everyone has something to offer, and our work is stronger when we make decisions as a collective group.

In my former position at The Alliance School, I always made the decisions with the faculty rather than for them. If the district raised an issue to me, we would use faculty meeting time for circle dialogue to arrive at a solution together. Sometimes, the solution would be exactly what the district had initially proposed. Other times, the solution would include our own recommendations based on our school’s context. This shared decision making helped build peace, especially when we tackled controversial issues.

Students’ perspectives and experiences are also valuable, so leadership must include their voices. At Alliance, we centered student voice in our democratic decision making.

For example, if an outside entity wanted to come to the school to highlight the work we were doing, the organization needed to write a letter of intent to the students. Then, the students had the power to vote yes or no. The students always made responsible decisions that protected the integrity of the school, which further highlighted to me the benefits of shared leadership.

Listen and Provide Choice

During the pandemic, our Cudahy community was quite anxious about the decision to reopen fully or remain virtual. To calm nerves, I offered weekly Zoom sessions with our 400 staff members. I would share with them what I was learning from the health department, and I would give them space to ask questions. We were all much more connected after listening to one another, which helped build community in a time of isolation. As a result of these dialogues, we developed stronger policies and procedures, and we created a safe space for students to return to school.

Additionally, peace can be built by providing opportunities for choice. During the pandemic, we knew that we needed to give children and their families the choice to learn remotely or the choice to learn in person.

We knew some families faced difficult circumstances, and that safety meant different things to different families.

By providing choice, we were able to build peace as everyone felt empowered to make their own decisions.

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The concept of peacebuilding has the potential for positive impact in our schools and beyond. As human beings, we all have power. When students come to school, they are testing the world and their power. As educational leaders, we have the opportunity to help students use their power for good. By actively modeling peacebuilding and giving students an opportunity to participate in this effort, there is a greater chance students will use their power in positive, healthy ways throughout their lives.

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