Conflict Resolution

Towson State University's Columbia center will offer two professional development courses in February."Conflict Resolution and Compromise" will teach participants how to structure their lives to handle compromise comfortably; the appropriate time, place and mood for resolving conflict; and the art of getting plans implemented by others.The course is scheduled 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 16. Cost is $45."Speaking with Confidence" is the topic of a one-day seminar that will be led by professional speaker and humorist Allan M. Misch.

A state probation agent who volunteered as a conflict mediator was killed Tuesday night in an apparent North Baltimore murder-suicide in which a child survivor was found outside the house. Responding to a report of gunshots inside a home in the 3900 block of Frisby St., officers found a boy outside who told them they would find a dead relative inside, police said. Officers entered the home in the Pen Lucy neighborhood and found a 33-year-old woman shot in the torso and a man nearby who appeared to have suffered a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.

Peacekeeper Josh Roth patrols Guilford Elementary School's playground every week armed with a walkie-talkie and smooth talk to keep law and order. He's been trained as a peer mediator to help fellow students resolve disputes without violence.Josh, a 10-year-old fifth-grader, is part of Howard County's first group of elementary-school children who have learned to spot trouble among fellow classmates and defuse it before tempers flare and fistfights begin. One recent recess period, he cleared up ill will among six children.

Registration is now open for the Horizon Foundation's Community Leadership Academy, which provides training for local volunteers and emerging leaders. Participants are limited to residents in the Southeast area of Howard County who are 21 or older. Focus on community leadership is one of the key elements in the "Southeast 2015" initiative, a five-year effort by the Horizon Foundation and other partners to enhance the health and well being of the North Laurel-Savage community and its individual residents.

Hoping to reduce violence among single-parent families and those addicted to drugs and alcohol, two Howard County organizations are using an $8,000 state grant to teach residents how to resolve disputes peaceably.The Howard County Health Department, and the Mediation and Conflict Resolution Center at Howard Community College, are drafting plans to work with parents of children in the county's Head Start program and members of its addiction services support group.Officials at the Mediation and Conflict Resolution Center said the programs could begin as early as this fall, although officials in the health department say that paperwork could delay the start until next year.

Charles Lund is no stranger to conflict -- or to the practical difficulties in working it out."You might walk down the street a couple of blocks, and you might get into a fight over your tennis shoes," says Lund, an eighth-grader at Canton Middle School.And though he knows that fighting is seldom a good solution, Lund is realistic about what happens in the real world."Some people just don't think it over," he says. "Because everybody is jumping in, saying, 'Hit him!' They just don't think about it."

Baltimore City Council members are urging the school system to develop and implement a conflict resolution curriculum for students in grades three to 12 in an effort to stem school violence. Members of the council's Education Committee voted to endorse legislation sponsored by Councilwoman Agnes Welch that supports student-to-student counseling, teacher training in nonviolent conflict resolution and community partnerships to stem after-school violence. The bill, which is not binding, follows several recent high-profile incidents of school violence and violence by students, including the beating of a city school teacher in her classroom and an attack by students on a public bus passenger.

Sitting in their guidance counselor's small office, the students were soft-spoken, polite, almost deferential.Without knowing why thestudents had been assembled, it would be hard to guess what they hadin common.But this group of boys and girls from MacArthur Middle School in Fort Meade had been gathered to discuss fighting. Each had been in fights serious enough to warrant suspension.At MacArthur, however, they were given another option -- attending a program on conflict resolution.The students, most of them under directives from their parents, chose the classes.

Last month, two teen-agers, one from Baltimore's Northern High School, the other from Washington's Wilson High School - were slain in unrelated street attacks.Wayne Martin Rabb Jr., 15, of Baltimore was shot to death and Delonte Hicks, 16, of Washington was stabbed. The dead youths leave behind grieving families wondering how and why these tragedies happened.In both cases, teen-age suspects were arrested. Even if they are convicted, they will become nothing more than symbols of a failed punitive justice system.

NEW YORK - Teachers at Public School 217, a large, diverse elementary school in the Ditmas Park section of Brooklyn, were searching for ways to explain to their students the attack on the World Trade Center. So they turned to a simple lesson that is part of their continuing conflict resolution program. The story tells about a drop of honey falling from a rooftop. First a cat and dog fight over the drop. Then the neighbors get involved. The king keeps saying it's not his problem. Finally it's all-out war. The king realizes he should have dealt with the problem when it was just a drop of honey.

Children's artwork sought on conflict resolution for contest Maryland children in kindergarten through eighth grade may submit artwork for an art contest sponsored by the Maryland judiciary for Conflict Resolution Day on Oct. 15. The theme is resolving or preventing conflict - including peer mediation, apologizing, respecting differences, solving problems together, listening and alternatives to violence. Between three and five entries may be selected to become bookmarks to promote conflict resolution.

Baltimore City Council members are urging the school system to develop and implement a conflict resolution curriculum for students in grades three to 12 in an effort to stem school violence. Members of the council's Education Committee voted to endorse legislation sponsored by Councilwoman Agnes Welch that supports student-to-student counseling, teacher training in nonviolent conflict resolution and community partnerships to stem after-school violence. The bill, which is not binding, follows several recent high-profile incidents of school violence and violence by students, including the beating of a city school teacher in her classroom and an attack by students on a public bus passenger.

The Mediation and Conflict Resolution Center at Howard Community College has received a grant of $27,000 from the Maryland Mediation and Conflict Resolution Office. The center plans to use the grant to create a free Campus Community Mediation Program for students and employees. The program is to work closely with potential referral sources on campus, such as the counseling and wellness centers, the offices of human resources and student support services, and the student government association.

PHILADELPHIA -- The men on the corner of 16th and Page in North Philadelphia say they know what their neighborhood needs to stem the violence that has killed 306 people citywide so far this year, and that does not include putting 10,000 men on the street, as some black community leaders have proposed. Amid the weed-strewn lots and boarded-up buildings of North Philadelphia, one of the city's toughest neighborhoods, the six men who gathered to talk, drink and play cards say the young people who pull guns and deal drugs need jobs, recreation centers, after-school programs and, most of all, parents who care for them.

It is part of the American dream -- a home in the country overlooking a landscape of cornfields or pastures with horses or a herd of black-and-white Holsteins. But the reality of country living kicks in when farmers spread the manure needed to nourish their crops or stir up whirlwinds of dust when plowing their fields. That's when problems begin. And these problems are just as great for the farmers -- small businesspeople earning a living off the land -- as they are for neighboring homeowners.

Trella Jorge stood in a circle of desks and spoke in a loud, clear voice. "I don't like coming here," the 13-year-old seventh-grader said to her peers at Northwest Middle School one Tuesday afternoon. "It makes me feel bad. It just makes me want to leave and run away. Why do I have to come?" JoAnn Sanner, director of Family and Community Mediation at the Carroll County Youth Service Bureau, prompted Trella's peers to assess her situation. "She's saying she doesn't want to be here," Sanner said.

This time next year, University of Maryland researchers will launch a $2 million federal study to find out whether a program being used in Anne Arundel County classrooms can change how children treat one another, school officials told the Board of Education yesterday. The study will look at the effectiveness of Second Step, a behavior education program used in 15,000 schools nationwide, including more than 50 in Anne Arundel and several in Baltimore. Programs that teach young pupils skills such as conflict resolution and anger management can affect how they perform academically later, said Professor Gary Gottfredson, who is leading the study.

Peace Camp is meeting Saturday afternoons at the Village Learning Place on St. Paul Street in Charles Village. The object of the new summer class is to teach children how to handle bullies through conflict resolution. Bullying has lately become a national concern. It has been linked to escalating high school violence, including shootings, and to psychological problems among students. "Adults in charge let it happen, all too often with the attitude, `Boys will be boys, kids will be kids,'" said Zora Salisbury, a facilitator who brought the curriculum from the Homewood Friends Meeting, where a similar workshop was conducted in concert with Quaker principles of nonviolence.

Maroulla Plangetis marked the Rev. Martin Luther King's birthday on an Annapolis Transit bus. Over a four-hour period Monday, the Annapolis High School senior and more than a dozen other volunteers rode in circles around the city, handing other passengers brochures with tips on how to solve problems peacefully. Recalling King's support of Freedom Rides in the 1960s to protest segregated seating on public buses, Plangetis looked at the white, black and Hispanic riders sitting together and mused that the civil rights leader would be proud to see what the movement has accomplished.

Owen Brown Village officials are seeking the assistance of a third party to help organize a public forum to discuss what should be done with the Lake Elkhorn tot lot, a village official said. Neil Dorsey, chairman of the Owen Brown Village Board, said the panel will meet with members of Howard Community College's Mediation and Conflict Resolution Center next month. "We wanted a third party to facilitate the meeting," said Dorsey, who has not selected a date for the forum. "This takes away concern people may have that if I was running it or somebody else on the board was running it, it would be biased or directional, and we don't want that.