Reconciliation in action
Head teacher Sally Kaminski-Gaze writes about peacework in schools
As a member of the Religious Society of Friends, the Peace Testimony is at the heart of my faith. This complements and nourishes my work as head teacher of an Anglican school in bringing about a learning community for the children and adults in which all are valued, where all are empowered to forgive and where harmony can be restored.
All Saints CE Primary School and Nursery in Nuneaton, Warwickshire, serves an area of high deprivation. The percentage of pupils in receipt of free school meals is well above the national average; unemployment is high; substance and alcohol abuse, as well as domestic violence, are prevalent. Many of our children come from families whose lives are fractured due to, for example, economic uncertainty, or insecure and abusive relationships.
Trust, a necessary component of reconciliation, has to be built up over time, so it has taken perseverance and tenacity to develop trusting relationships with these families. Often I am met with hostility and aggression, yet once that has passed, a vulnerable and often insecure parent/adult is revealed, needing help and support, but uncertain how to seek it. Providing a quiet place for them to talk with, for example, the school’s learning mentor, pastoral manager, class teacher, or with me, can facilitate acceptance and the beginning of a journey. This is just one example of reconciliation in action at All Saints.
Valuing one another
For the past seven years, the school has bought into the services of the West Midlands Quaker Peace Education Project (WMQPEP), which delivers a ten-week ‘Peacemakers’ Project’ with Year 4 pupils during the summer term. Led by a skilled WMQPEP worker, the children are guided to learn about themselves and to raise their self-esteem. This enables the children to value themselves and each other, and encourages acceptance, regardless of difference.
In addition, WMQPEP trains our Year 5 pupils annually to be ‘peer mediators’ at lunch and playtimes; helping their peers, through a very structured approach, to solve their own quarrels and reach resolution. Pupils in Years 5 and 6 act as ‘play leaders’ at lunchtime, helping younger children find their way about and organising games in the playground.
Our behaviour policy states that all children start each day ‘afresh’, regardless of the previous day. It is a chance to try again, to right the mistake and to be forgiven. It includes an opportunity for a ‘restorative conversation’ between children who have fallen out, or between the adult and child who has ‘lost the way’.
It is imperative to teach today’s children about peace and peaceful strategies, learning to handle conflict creatively, and tackling injustice and racial prejudice. Handling conflict creatively, recognising one’s own strengths and weaknesses, learning to love and forgive others, building greater fairness and equality, and demonstrating the futility of violence, are vital for children in today’s war-torn world.
Daily news bulletins inform us of the lack of peace: man’s inhumanity to man; cruelty to children; starving millions; corruption; exploitation; needless, endless wars causing suffering around the world; the extinction of rare species of animals and birds; and the pollution of our planet.
Bridging friendships
There must be a better way. So, what strategies do we need? How should we begin to teach our children to act and think differently?
One thing is clear: there is no place in society for racism and bigotry. We have to understand one another, our neighbours and our neighbours’ religions, and understand that skin colour makes no difference to our peaceful quest. We have to learn a proper respect for all human beings and their points of view. We have to learn to listen and to celebrate our differences, our similarities and our common humanity.
Children need to learn peaceful strategies for themselves. They also need to learn the concept: ‘Peace starts with me and how I view the world.’ In their learning quest, children need to love themselves before they can love others, and learn how to put others first as honest, caring individuals, truly deserving to make the world a better place in which to live, through their direct actions.
Once the children have understood this concept of peace lying within themselves, they can reach out and spread peace within their families, homes, schools and communities, and in all their relationships. Children need to question what is acceptable and what is not. They need to grow into the sort of people who stand against injustice.
As part of our ‘bridging friendships’ community cohesion work, we linked with a Quaker school in Oxfordshire. Someone from Coventry Cathedral, whose mission is ‘Peace and Reconciliation’, came to talk to pupils during one of Sibford School’s visits to us. The children listened to the story behind the bridge sculpture in the grounds of the old cathedral. This was used as the basis of some jointly shared artwork between children of both schools. During a visit to Sibford School in 2012, children participated in an eco-project and ‘Olympic Games’. We have also visited and made links with a church school, Broad Chalke Primary School, near Salisbury in Wiltshire, whose own book of prayers we regularly use.
Our school has developed a Peace Garden in the grounds at the back of the school. This is a quiet, special place where benches are arranged in a circle surrounded by trees, bushes and wildlife. Following a ceramics workshop, each child made a cylindrical clay tube, which they decorated and fired. These were ‘threaded’ onto upright canes and ‘planted’ into the Peace Garden soil. Now these stand tall, strong and upright as ‘peace pillars’.
According to a Year 2 teacher: ‘The peace programme was a fantastic resource to use with all children, especially at the start of the year as we are all getting to know one another. I felt it was a very helpful way of building positive relations within class, between the children, and between children and staff. Peacemaker training last year helped me to tailor the activities for the children.’
For example, sitting in a circle, one child holds an object and talks about what peace means to them. The object is then passed around the circle so that everybody has a chance to share their thoughts.
A key tool and a core value
Education is a key tool for helping young people to develop a set of values and attitudes to build peace and equip young people with the personal skills to use in challenging situations. Pupils with underdeveloped personal skills, with low levels of empathy, with an inability to understand and control their own emotions and without a clear set of personal moral values, are at a distinct disadvantage in a whole range of ways.
Children (and adults) learn best when their relationships are positive and healthy, and when the learning environment of school is calm, respectful and peaceful. Peace is a core value that both draws on and enriches other values such as fairness, justice, respect, tolerance and empathy.
Very few people would argue that these attitudes are not very much needed in our own country and schools.
Comments
This is moving and inspiring to read. It’s wonderful, at a time when we hear of ‘educational’ school visits by the armed forces and arms manufacturers, to learn how peace is waged at All Saints. Thank you. As an author who visits schools, I would love to see work like yours in action, and hope others will follow this example.
By suehampton@btinternet.com on 3rd January 2019 - 12:03
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