Workable Peace Curriculum Units Now Available for Purchase

Published September 12th, 2008
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The Consensus Building Institute and the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School have just released the Workable Peace Curriculum Series, a set of seven comprehensive curriculum guides published by PON Books for secondary schools and youth programs.  

Workable Peace was designed to respond to the growing need for young people to understand violence and conflict, to develop tolerance and appreciation for alternative perspectives, and to learn and practice a set of tools for handling their emotions, understanding and meeting their underlying needs, and responding to conflict in their lives.  Developed by practitioners and educators at the Consensus Building Institute, Workable Peace is an innovative conflict resolution curriculum for secondary school classrooms, integrating the study of conflict with core social studies and humanities subjects, making it an effective resource for rigorous learning with clear academic and social relevance.

By inviting students to examine history and current events from multiple perspectives, Workable Peace develops students’ abilities to understand the underlying sources of intergroup conflict, and to practice skills for resolving conflicts without violence. By integrating the study of intergroup conflict with core social studies and humanities subjects, and helping students understand and make connections between conflicts around the world, in the U.S. and in their own schools and communities, Workable Peace makes the teaching and learning experience more creative, productive, and meaningful.

The Workable Peace curriculum has be successfully used by middle and high schools across the country and internationally, as well as by post-secondary institutions ranging from community colleges to the graduate level.

The new Workable Peace Curriculum Series consists of seven units, each focused on a historical or recent conflict:

 

Each curriculum unit contains five sections:

  1. An analytical framework that teaches the sources of intergroup conflict and conflict management strategies
  2. Introductory activities to teach conflict analysis, using historical events and primary source documents
  3. An in-depth role play that challenges participants to voice their group’s needs, understand the needs of others, and seek ways to meet their goals through negotiation with representatives of other groups
  4. Additional resources, including an annotated bibliography of additional information on the issues in the role play, as well as civic learning activities that apply the conflict resolution skills to parallel issues in students’ live
  5. Additional negotiation and mediation skill-building activities

Each activity includes a detailed Teacher’s Guide.  For the role play, the Teacher’s Guide offers step-by-step instructions on how to set up, implement, and debrief the role play, in addition to suggestions for trouble-shooting challenges and assessment suggestions to ensure that teachers can fully integrate the Workable Peace curriculum into their classroom plans. Worksheets and rubrics for student preparation and assessment are also included.

The Curriculum Units are available for purchase individually or as a set, through the Program on Negotiation Clearinghouse online at www.pon.org or by telephone at 800-258-4406.  Single use digital versions are also available for University audiences.

Stacie Nicole Smith is the Director of Workable Peace and a Senior Associate at the Consensus Building Institute.  She is the author and editor of the Workable Peace Curriculum Series.