Today I gave a Prezi presentation and facilitated a discussion on peace pedagogy for a group of City Year Corps Leaders. City Year is an education focused, nonprofit organization that unites young people of all backgrounds for a year of full-time service to keep students in school and on track to graduation. My presentation focused on the work I have been doing within the field of peace education, looking holistically at how one can teach peace, no matter the subject or age level, in order to cultivate peaceable classrooms and communities. My presentation was part of a larger program American University organized for City Year and involved presentations by several other American University professors. Continue reading to learn more…
I was delighted to be a part of this program for several reasons. (1) It shows that American University and City Year have an interest in peace education and (2) it gave me an opportunity to try and condense a lot of the thinking I have been doing around this topic over the past few years into a short presentation.
I am currently teaching a peace pedagogy graduate course at AU and this presentation was an attempt to condense the main ideas and themes covered in that course into 45 minutes. I was not necessarily successful in that effort, in that I had to really speed through things at the end, but it got me thinking about how to succinctly capture the framework for peace pedagogy I have been developing.
The framework I have developed is an attempt to fuse a lot of different conceptions of peace education into one. As it stands now, I have outlined 7 pillars or spheres of peace pedagogy – (1) Community Building, (3) Enabling Multiple Intelligences, (3) Nurturing Emotional Intelligence, (4) Exploring Approaches to Peace, (5) Reframing History, (6) Transforming Conflict Nonviolently, and (7) Skill Building.
My presentation began by asking the City Year Corps Leaders why they are interested in this field and then I explained a little bit about what experiences inspired me to focus on peace education. I then walked them through the different spheres and for each one they worked in pairs to discuss some of the questions that I believe can help all teachers and educators think, design, and facilitate as peace builders and peace makers. After the discussions I asked a few of the leaders to share what they talked about with the rest of the group and then I shared some examples of teaching activities and methods I have used or seen that work to advance each of the spheres.
Click here to check out the Prezi presentation. This is a work in progress and I look forward to developing it further with the help of other peace educators.
Daryn R. Cambridge 
This is fantastic! Thanks for sharing. Do you have any other resources that expand upon the different aspects of Peace Education? Specifically for elementary aged students? I’ve recently started an after-school peace club for 3rd-5th graders, and I’m looking for various activities/lessons that address the various levels of Peace Education.
Hi Colby. I am glad that you enjoyed the presentation. I would recommend checking out the website I use (a work in progress) that is developing the conversation and curating/creating exercises and activities that fit within this framework, http://peacelearner.org. Check out the activities section for activity descriptions. Also, Teaching Tolernce, http://tolerance.org, is one of my favorite peace educators websites. It is put together by the Southern Poverty Law Center and I does a really great job pulling together great resources. They will also send you a lot of resources…for FREE! Last, I would recommend checking out Susan Gelber Cannon’s website, http://teachforpeace.org. I recently saw her speak at a conference and found her experience very insightful and useful. She has a list of resources to check out on her website.
Hi Daryn,
Great work! Would you mind if I used this in the TWB online course? It would fit great with our section on Peace Education Pedagogy!
Hope you are well!
Best,
Stephanie
stephanie@twb.org
Absolutely! I would be delighted if you used it. How is the online course going? I am in the process of facilitating an ICNC/USIP partnered online course on civil resistance. We are using Moodle. I also helped moderate a 3 week online course with TechChange a few weeks ago (blog post pending on that). I would love to compare notes. Would it be possible for me to get a sneak peak of the online course?
Hey Daryn,
Definitely! On both fronts. Would you have time to Skype sometime this week? It’d be great to compare notes. I’ll also send you an email with the course info.
Look forward to talking soon!
Best,
Stephanie
Thanks for this wonderful work I just hope you had the opportunity to conduct such a training here in Liberia.
That would be wonderful. I would love to hear more about the work you are doing…
Colby you work is superb and although kenya has different cultural orientation there is alot i can learn from you.You are original and this informs me that peace education pedagogy can be formulated with precise.
I am a student of TWB Peace education online course. STEPHANIE KNOX CUBBON is head instructor. I am a Liberian reading GUIDANCE COUNSELING AT THE TUBMAN UNIVERSITY here i n Harper, Maryland County, Liberia.
Daryn, for some reason I never got a notification of your reply back in October, and strangely enough, through a Google search, I just came across this page again and saw your response, haha kinda crazy. Anyway, just wanted to say thanks for the resources, they look great! I’m actually working with the Arizona Department of Juvenile Corrections to design a peace educatoin course for their school in the correctional facility. I’ll definitely be including these websites as additional resources.