Rethinking Conflict is a program where youth learn how to transform conflict into opportunities that strengthen their relationships and lead to social, emotional, and personal growth. This skill-building, social-emotional learning program serves youth in schools, at community organizations, and at The Conflict Center itself. When partnering with schools or community organizations, the Rethinking Conflict curriculum can be tailored to best fit the needs of the school or community partner, allowing us to work together to provide youth with practical tools to navigate conflict in a healthy manner.
The Rethinking Conflict curriculum covers eight topics: Connections, Choices, Communication, Conflict, Anger, Respect, Negotiation, and Affirmation. By engaging in thoughtful discussion with The Conflict Center’s experienced program instructors, youth ages 11-18 are able to build social-emotional learning skills that will allow them to rethink conflict in their personal, academic, and professional lives.
Program Highlights:
“`I learned that anger is natural and the way you handle it has different effects.”
“When conflict happens, I now try to take a deep breath and evaluate my choices.”
"I'm more thoughtful, contemplative, and empathetic. My instructors rocked!"
Rethinking Conflict is a class that offers a skills-based curriculum specifically tailored to address concerns and difficulties youth are experiencing around making healthy decisions for themselves as well as how to recognize their emotions, especially anger, and manage them in healthy, effective ways. Classes are conducted in a group format, which allows students to learn from one another’s diverse experiences. Each person who completes our class gains an understanding of how conflict can be used as an opportunity for growth and problem solving.
The Conflict Center understands that throughout a child’s development, parents/guardians play a critical role in the development of social and emotional skills. In recognition of this, we have built a parent-involvement component into our youth classes. Parents or guardians participate in half of the class sessions, focusing on family communication and skill-building.
We strategically keep the classes between 5 and 10 participants. We find that this class size allows participants to comfortably share their story in a small group, while still being able to receive feedback and guidance from instructors.
In practice, positive youth development incorporates the development of skills, opportunities and authentic relationships into programs, practices and policies, so that young people reach their full potential. This practical lens depicts youth and young adults as resources to cultivate, as opposed to problems to fix, and is dependent upon the use of the following guiding principles: strengths-based approach, inclusive of all youth, engages youth as partners, collaboration and sustainability
For more information, please contact Sander Bregman at sander.bregman@conflictcenter.org or call 303.865.5632.
Simply put — we teach people to solve problems and build relationships. We want families, schools and communities to put themselves at the center of nonviolence. Our programs equip people with skills to navigate conflict productively.
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