Peace Table Project is an on-going series of proactive peace building sessions designed for children aged 5-12. The sessions can occur within the school day, or be offered in the after school context.

     The peace table refers to a specific place a child can go to resolve a conflict with another. During the course of the sessions, a place is designated as the peace table, the place to go when in conflict with another. Armed with the tools to resolve their conflict, the disputants have the opportunity to attempt to do so.

I built Peace Table Project on certain core research tested concepts:
         The first is that children don't come equipped with social problem solving skills. 
         The second is that the quality of one's interpersonal relationships is closely connected to overall life satisfaction. 
          The third is that children can learn about conflict resolution and related issues, if those issues are addressed specifically.

Children genuinely want peace in their lives, and are interested in how to make it happen.

    The original idea for peace table came from Epiphany School. I was researching various conflict resolution methods for children for my master’s degree in education. A friend, whose child attended Epiphany, told me about their methods, and I interviewed the administrators about how they used the peace table. They enthusiastically described a scene where they watched from the outside as two boys came in off the playground to resolve their scrap at the table. At that moment, teaching conflict resolution to children became a mission.

    The idea developed further after taking the class Philosophy for Children at the University of Hawaii.  In that class, Dr. Thomas Jackson trains future teachers to encourage the dialectical method with children. A safe space is created, and a community of inquiry emerges.  Children have many questions, and when they are given the gift of time and space to ask the questions and discuss their answers with peers and university student mentors, they learn to use the power of their intellect. 

    It became clear to me after taking Philosophy for Children, that learning and thinking are closely connected to emotion. Then what struck was how interpersonal upset in the school environment could impede learning. Emotional literacy became an educational issue. The research backed up my suspicions: children who do not feel safe at school, who are bullied, or otherwise upset emotionally, experience difficulty learning. But if the school is a true community, an inclusive, nurturing and positive environment, then children will have a better academic experience.
    
    Shortly after taking Dr. Jackson's class, Dr. Mary Martini, a friend and professor in the Family Resources Program at the University of Hawaii, introduced me to the work of psychiatrist Alfred Adler. His work suggests that when people feel they belong to a group and have the opportunity to contribute in meaningful ways to that group, they will choose the useful side of living. Humanity is interdependent by nature, and is best served when we take care of each other.

    With those influences as the foundation, I began to develop the four pillars of Peace Table Project over the course of several years working with grade school children.

Using play, stories, and discussion, Peace Table Project engages the emotional lives of children. While one core goal for the project is that children emerge with self driven peacemaking capabilities, along the way children begin to place more value on cooperation, communication, empathy, and other skills that will enhance their interpersonal relationships at home and at school.

     There are 4 pillars involved in facilitating PTP.

     The first is community building. We offer children the chance to see that their classmates are more like them than different from them. We leave behind the "us v. them" paradigm, and replace it with a spirit of positive interdependence, or "we’re all in this lifeboat together-we sink or swim together." We foster cooperation and teamwork using activities, literature and discussion.

     Second, we engage in self study.  Self awareness has long been considered a key component to "the good life".  We spend time thinking and talking about how we are each responsible for our thoughts, feelings, and ultimately our behavior.  No one "makes me do" anything. Everything is a choice, for which we alone are responsible.  Are we our feelings, or are we our behaviors?  We examine the nature of our self talk, with the book "Don't Feed the Monster on Tuesdays" - negative self talk is represented by a green monster, and ways are offered to be sure he stays in check.
     
     Next, we work extensively with emotional literacy, the ability of a child to identify and express his/her feelings. We treat emotion as a normal part of the whole child, and examine the various emotions, identifying when we experience them, what we do with them, and ways to manage them. We examine the role of thinking in a child’s emotional life, and build up a cache of tools to manage emotion.

     And finally, conflict resolution is addressed. We invite children to examine what peace is like as opposed to conflict, and ask them to choose which condition seems preferable. When they have indicated a specific desire for peace, we introduce mediation, and other ways to reduce the conflict and increase the peace.

Although sometimes I feel like we are swimming upstream, fighting a cultural obsession with violence and terror, I have seen amazing things happen when children are given the time and space to work with the topics we deal with during PTP sessions. Some of the questions we ask and topics we discuss:

What makes a good friend?

Did you ever tease anyone?

How does it feel to be listened to?

Anger: where does it come from, and what can you do with it?

Forgiveness: what’s in it for me?

Loneliness: Am I the only one who feels this way?

Self talk

Peace vs. Conflict: which do I prefer?

So what I would hope for the child is that he/she become more aware of his thoughts, more mindful of his actions, and more careful with his words.  
 
Who sponsors PTP?

Peace Education Inc. is a corporation in the process of becoming a 501c3.
PTP is not affiliated with with any religious denomination or government institution. We stress personal responsibility for thoughts, words, and actions. We aim to illuminate the effects of our thoughts, words, and actions on others. We strive to help children find their place in the human conversation.

If you are interested in forming a peace table group at your organization, please contact me, at  (808) 383-2853, or lisaj@hawaii.edu.