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CLASSROOM-VIOLENCE WORKSHOPS TRAIN TEACHERS FOR OTHER THREE 'R'S | |
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From: Media Relations September 18, 2000HARRISONBURG – Resolving conflicts in elementary- and middle-school classrooms will be the focus of six one-day teacher workshops to be held statewide by James Madison University. Conceived by Arlene Cundiff, coordinator of the Virginia Department of Education's Safe and Drug-Free Schools program, and designed by H. Richard Travis, a professor of health sciences at JMU, the workshops are funded by a $44,834 VDOE grant. "When teachers spend half of their instructional time disciplining students, we must examine what's going on in our classrooms," Travis said. "Studies indicate that education programs can help students learn to constructively express their feelings, avoid and defuse violent situations, control peer violence, and use reasoning and problem-solving skills as violence-prevention techniques. "These workshops will show teachers how to implement that kind of training in their classrooms." Rather than relying on traditional "teacher-as-enforcer" solutions to classroom conflicts, the workshops will show how to make students responsible for controlling violent behavior, Travis said. This doesn't mean there won't be adult supervision and control, he said, only that students will be taught a new set of three 'R's – respect, responsibility and resolution – and will become the "solvers" of conflict. Three workshops for middle-school teachers, led by FSR Associates, a Mount Crawford-based mediation firm, will be held:
# # #For more information, contact Dr. Richard Travis at (540) 568-3953, or via e-mail at travishr@jmu.edu.by Charles Culbertson, Media Relations |
 
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Publisher: Media Relations For Information Contact: JMU News Bureau |
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