Raising Peacemakers

by Esther Sokolov Fine

Raising Peacemakers tells a twenty-two year story of kids growing up with peacemaking as their foundation. At Downtown Alternative School (DAS), a small public elementary school in Toronto, child-to-child conflicts were understood as opportunities. Children and adults worked hard to create a warm inclusive community where differing viewpoints and disagreements could be handled fairly and safely.

While the book includes documentation and transcripts, it’s a narrative rather than an academic text. It’s the author’s story and many stories. It’s a trail of re-thinking, negotiating and re-negotiating, solving and re-solving (occasionally resolving) teaching and learning dilemmas. It’s a tale of one school’s brave and optimistic effort to create and sustain healthy, safe, equitable, and academically relevant conditions for and with people whose lives were and are at stake in public education. It’s about children and adults growing together as they discover more about what it means (and what it takes) to become responsible citizens who care about each other, about their community, and about the world.

Between their many inevitable conflicts, encouraged by adults, DAS children established their own rituals. They would double-cross their arms and clasp fingers in a group handshake to mark the conclusion of “a peacemaking.” They would wipe away tears, giggle, move on to other things, or resume their play. They were learning to express themselves, listen, and include. The adults learned to hold back, hover, and accept what for the children constituted resolution, even when they (the adults) did not always fully get it.

The DAS community was dedicated to the serious work, and to the joy, of respectful relationships and power sharing. This book invites you to step back more than twenty years to learn about how this began and what keeps it alive to this day.

132 pages, Paperback

First published June 10, 2015

About the author

Esther Sokolov Fine is a Professor Emerita in the Faculty of Education at York University, in Toronto, Canada, where she taught for 24 years. Before coming to York, she was an elementary teacher with the Toronto Board of Education. There, she taught in downtown public housing communities and innovative alternative programs, including four years at the Downtown Alternative School (DAS). The book "Children as Peacemakers" (Heinemann 1995), which she co-authored with teachers Ann Lacey and Joan Baer, presents a history of the Downtown Alternative School and tells about the early years of peacemaking. Her newest book "Raising Peacemakers" (Garn Press 2015) documents 22 years of video research with this same community, as the kids grew up (funded by Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada).

Reviews

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an incredible look back at the methods and effects of the DAS school in Toronto, and their intentional efforts to incorporate peacemaking skills into the children’s learning.

Notably, empowering kids to be peacemakers in their own conflicts inspires them to be risk takers as well as empathetic problem solvers.

I will be rereading portions for sure!

[Kathleen McDonnell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Raising Peacemakers chronicles the attempt “to build a warm and inclusive community where ongoing conflicts and bullying behaviours could be faced and handled fairly and safely" at Downtown Alternative School in Toronto. The book is full of the insights and lessons the DAS community learned along the way. Fine was one of the teachers who helped birth the Peacemaking project, and her book is a weaving of material from various sources: personal reflections, first-hand accounts, video and interviews with students, teachers and parents. What was going on at DAS was broader – and more revolutionary – than simple conflict resolution. It was based on a belief that even very young children can be active agents in their own lives, that they have insights and abilities that usually go unacknowledged by adults. This book could not be more timely, in an era when schools are increasingly seen as violent places and lockdowns are becoming part of the daily news feed.

[Tom O'Hanley · Rating 5 out of 5]

RAISING PEACEMAKERS is a short book by page total but long and deep in serious thought, specific action, and intelligent reflection. Its themes and analyzed processes are applicable throughout all learning stages, but it is in childhood when the roots of respect and the flowering of reconciliation must take place. Professor Fine's thesis at DAS is not one of isolated academic application, but of an idealism developing itself through practicality, close observation, and self-questioning (by both staff and students) into a realistic approach to childhood conflicts, and the long-term results of mutual resolution. RAISING PEACEMAKERS is an example of educational practices and insights at their progressive best.

[Billie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fundamentally peacemakers are not born they are taught. Although everyone has a passive and aggressive side to them it is possible, if started at a young age, to build in mechanisms that will allow a person to deal with the aggression and disappointment that life can present to them, in a positive manner.

Much like the tensions that exist within the world - you know where I mean - those tensions were taught to children from a very young age and reinforced through repeating the same message. If only that message could have been a positive one, most of the conflicts the world currently faces would not exist.

GROUNDBREAKING book. Highly recommended reading

Review based on a free copy from the Goodreads program - Thank you Goodreads

[Cathy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Full disclosure: my daughter was part of the longitudinal study explored in this book. Which means that I knew many of the young subjects personally. That being said, this is an excellent exploration of how conflict resolution can be taught to young children in such a way that it informs their development throughout their school years and early adulthood.