Hi, everyone. Welcome to our webinar. It's great to have you all here. This is It's Never Too Early, Engaging Upper Elementary Students in Conversations and Actions for Peace. It's a special webinar for educators in honor of the Teacher Appreciation Week hosted by the Global Peace Building Center here at the U.S. Institute of Peace in Washington, D.C. So I'm Megan Chabalowski, and I'm a program officer in the Global Peace Building Center, and I'd like to introduce you to our center's director, Ann Louise Colgan. Hi, everybody. Thank you, Megan. The Global Peace Building Center is the public education program here at USIP. And we extend USIP's work to new audiences across the U.S. and beyond with a range of initiatives and resources to make peace building accessible and engaging. And as Megan noted, we place a priority on working with educators and on reaching young people to enable them to learn about peace as something practical and something to which they can actively contribute at a young age as well as beyond. So this webinar is really just one example of the kinds of resources we make available to support educators as they, in turn, work to nurture this next generation of peace builders. We are delighted to have you with us today, and I will turn it back to Megan and to our special guests. Thank you, Ann Louise. So we are so pleased to be hosting this webinar on engaging children as peace builders. And to welcome our special guests who we have here, Jill McManigal and Sarah Leveso. Hi. You'll be hearing more from them in just a minute. But I also want to thank everyone who's watching, who's tuned in for joining us today. So I saw a few familiar faces in the RSVP, so we're really glad to have you back. And if you're new to us, if you're new to the Global Peace Building Center, then welcome. We're so glad to have you here, and we hope that we will see you again. So over the next hour, Jill, Sarah, and I are going to be talking about engaging upper elementary aged children as peace builders. So we'll explore what it means for children to be peace builders. We'll share new educator resources for this age group, and this includes a set of newly adapted lesson plans, which we're really excited about. And Sarah helped us on that, so she'll talk a bit more about that. And then we'll also chat about other creative ideas for engaging children in learning about and taking action for peace. So that's what we have planned for you, and we're really excited about it. Jill and Sarah are going to kick off the webinar with some presentations for us on their work, and then we'll spend the rest of the webinar in conversation. So I will be asking some questions to our special guests, but you as our audience are also free, and we encourage you and love to get some questions from you. So you should see a Q&A button. If you don't see something that says Q&A, then it might be located in the upper right hand corner of your video screen, and you'll see sort of a set of nine small boxes. And so if you click on that, then you will see the Q&A option. So that's where you can find it. So feel free to submit us questions throughout, and we'll make sure that we incorporate them and answer them as we go along. So also if you want to tweet about this, if you're a Twitter bug, as we go along and you'd like to tweet about this webinar as you're watching, then please we encourage you to do so, and you can use the hashtag, hashtag teach peace webinar. So on that note, without further ado, I think we'll get into it. I'd like to introduce our guests. So we have Sarah Leveso and Jill McManigal here with us today. Sarah is an elementary school teacher, formerly in Washington, D.C., but just moved to Colorado, who has taught grades one through five here in D.C. public schools. So while teaching fifth grade, Sarah attended a training at USIP. We offer trainings for teachers, and she attended one, where she learned about our Peace Building Toolkit for Educators and other resources, and then started using them with her students. So the toolkit only comes in middle and high school editions, and so she had to adapt these lessons for her younger elementary students. When we then decided to work with the teacher to adapt some of these lessons from the Peace Building Toolkit for Educators for elementary students, Sarah was our obvious choice. So we received requests for resources like this to tailor our things, our resources for elementary school students for a while. So we've heard you loud and clear if you're one of those people watching who asked us for it. So we're so pleased that Sarah can join us today to kind of talk about how she adapted our lesson plans, and then to talk about her own experiences in the classroom teaching elementary school age students about global peace building. And so, hi, hi. Welcome, Sarah. We're glad to have you join us. Thank you for having me. We're excited to talk to you. Good. Jill, we're also thrilled to have Jill here. She is the co-founder and executive director of Kids for Peace, a worldwide nonprofit organization that nurtures children's innate capacities to create peace through opportunities for youth leadership, community service, global friendships, and thoughtful acts of kindness. So Jill is a former elementary school teacher and a recipient of numerous awards, including Congresswoman Susan Davis's Empowering Youth and Service Award. And then one of my favorite Jill tidbits is that April 26th has been proclaimed Jill McManigal Day in San Diego, which is pretty amazing. So we're really honored to have you here, Jill, especially because Kids for Peace was an outstanding partner to the U.S. Institute of Peace during last year's International Day of Peace. They mobilized you, mobilized your dozens of chapters and millions of students, teachers and families around the world to take up our Peace Day challenge. So we thank you for that. And we're also then just thrilled to have you join us today. Yeah. So we are in for a really informative and engaging hour. And we have built this as a webinar for educators, but we use that term really broadly and think of both formal classroom teachers, but also those who teach in other educational settings, including parents at home. So we hope that you will find something in this for yourself and whatever your setting is. And Jill, I'd love to turn to you to start us off in thinking about how Kids for Peace educates children about peace and engages them outside of the classroom.  Fantastic. Thank you so much. I'm delighted that they instituted peace. I'm getting some major feedback. I will figure this out quickly. Sorry, all technical difficulties. Is there somebody with the microphone on on their computer in the room with you? Then we'll try that. Sorry about that. That's okay. We'll try this. We can hear you okay. Jill, you're off audio now. There we go. Let me just do my best. Thank you so much for including Kids for Peace in this on-air webinar. Anytime we can do anything with the instituted peace, we are absolutely delighted.  So anytime we can be part of that, we're very, very grateful. So thank you. Kids for Peace is a global nonprofit and our motto or our timeline is that we're uplifting our world through love and action. So we can jump to the next slide. So a little bit about Kids for Peace. I'm going to give you a lot of information and a little bit of time and hopefully you'll be able to take what most feeds your heart right now. We are a global nonprofit. We are spanning six continents. It was actually founded in my backyard. A high school student and myself started Kids for Peace back in 2006. And our whole premise is that we're giving our youth a platform to be peace builders. And they do that through love and action.  We don't just talk about it. We really have the kids get dirty and create peace. Our mission is that we create peace through youth leadership, community service, global friendships, and thoughtful acts of kindness. So every student is empowered to create peace for those needs. On our next slide, we'll see. Just a couple of highlights to let you know some of the exciting activities of Kids for Peace. We do have a school in Kenya that our children support. We're actually building a permanent structure right now. So we mobilize all of our chapters to be part of that. So there's a beautiful community global service project that we have created. We have our own Guinness World Record for the largest collage of cut out hand prints. We look for ways to really unite all of our chapters together to be part of a bigger project. So we collected over 180,000 hand prints that got installed at a hospital. And we are thrilled to say that we are the recipients for the largest collage of cut out hand prints. We also have a Peace Pack project. This is something that all of our chapters participate in. It's part of their global awareness and their global friendships. They learn about other cultures and then they reach out to the children in the other culture that they learned about with Peace Packs. And they're a knapsack filled with school supplies, toiletry, toys, and a note of friendship. And in that picture that you see there is one little boy who's reading a note that he had received from one of our Kids for Peace members. We really take the service to the next level and have it a place of love and friendship. And then the other picture is of our Kids for Peace book project. We publish a book every few years and we get entries from children all over the world. And this is actually Jane Goodall that was looking at our first book that was created called Peace Through Our Eyes. So we have lots of unifying projects and that's one of them. On the next slide, a few more of our highlights is we have a Peace Pledge tour. And we did a Washington D.C. Peace Pledge tour. We actually got to present our Peace Pledge on the House floor of Congress. That's when we got to attend the United States Institute of Peace and have a wonderful workshop there for all ages from the toddlers I think went from age four up to our teenagers. So that was a beautiful experience. We do have Kids for Peace in Pakistan. I have traveled there to launch the official Kids for Peace Pakistan. So we're really igniting different regions of kids who are really looking for tangible ways that they can impact their communities and the entire world for peaceful needs. A highlight that Megan had mentioned was the Peace Day Challenge. This last year we were thrilled to have 118 countries participate in our Peace Day Challenge checklist that we created as inspired by the Institute of Peace. And then there's, we've also been to the United Nations and presented at the United Nations on the International Day of Peace presented our Peace Pledge there. So lots of fun ways to bring all of our students together. On our next slide we will see that we have two main programs in Kids for Peace. We have our great kindness challenge which is a school program. This last year we had over five million students, 8,000 schools that participated and schools use it for a bully prevention program. We see it as much more than that. We see it as a program to create a culture of peace and kindness on all campuses. So that is a program that's implemented through schools specifically. And then we have our Peace Pledge program. And the Peace Pledge program is implemented by our chapters. And for our chapters we have neighborhood chapters and we have school based chapters. So the neighborhood chapters meet either on weekends or after school hours. And each chapter meet boys and girls of all ages and they come together in meaningful ways. So we currently have 124 active chapters in 23 countries. Of those 70 of them are domestic and United States based chapters. And 54 are international chapters. Since 2006 we've launched over 400 chapters. So it's really exciting to me to know that all over the world there are kids of all ages wanting to be part of this positive change. So I'm going to mostly focus on the Peace Pledge program. And that is how we implement our programming in schools and after schools as well. So on our next slide I'll talk to you a little bit more about the Peace Pledge program. So the Peace Pledge program is based on our Peace Pledge as the title suggests. And the Peace Pledge are six lines that were written by the children for the whole world. They talk about using kind words, helping others, caring for their earth, respecting each other, joining together the power of collaboration and then the empowerment of doing your part. So that's the base of the Peace Pledge program. The Peace Pledge program is what sets the foundation, or the Peace Pledge sets the foundation for the program. It's very simple. One of the ways that we have been able to expand so massively in such a short period of time is because we keep everything really simple and we keep things really meaningful. And we keep it child-centered, a student-centered so they're really the ones who are driving it. So the Peace Pledge program simply takes the line to the Peace Pledge, the six lines, and then we have ways for students to brainstorm meaningful projects for each line of the Peace Pledge. So if we go to the next slide, I'll give you examples of how this... a little bit more about the Peace Pledge program curriculum. It could either be a school-wide program, it could be a classroom program or a lunch club program. And I did mention that it can also be an after-school or a neighborhood chapter. So it is suitable for both the school setting and the after-school setting. It is for pre-K through high schools. We have all ages and we adapt it accordingly. We actually have our director of an expansion who helped to tailor the implementation to fit each school's needs. We recognize that there are some small schools that are already doing some piece work and then this is just in addition to that and it complements what they already have. There's other schools that are looking for a complete program and we can come in and we can help to implement it that way. So whatever schools are looking for, we help to make it a good fit for them. And we do have an adult leaders training. Actually we have teenagers who are also trained at times for that to help to...we provide the training, the tools and the support so they can have a successful chapter. And we give all of our chapters a national and global collaboration and peace-building opportunities. Some of the highlights that I had shown earlier examples of some of those opportunities that we have. And then in those pictures there is a Peace Pledge passport that's just taking the Peace Pledge and putting it into action. There's other picture of our manual there that's provided to all of the leaders. And we have a great leaders portal that has lots of resources as well. So then on the second to last slide, I'll give you some examples of what those activities could look like line for line. On the first line I pledge to use my words to speak in a kind way. Students might write thank you notes to their staff for the teachers. Another favorite activity is going to school board meeting or city council meeting and expressing gratitude. So we really give the students the tools to use their voice for good. Then the client I pledge to help others as I go throughout my day. These are all examples from our curriculum that we have a nice lesson where they read the kindness quilt, which is a beautiful picture book, and then the kids can make no-sew quilts to donate to shelters. Another project is creating placemats that they decorate that go into meal service delivery. So there's some little projects and there's some more involved projects, more complex projects. So we really give a wide range depending on what the age and the needs of each of them chapters are. For I pledge to care for our earth with my healing heart and hands, kids will organize a cat's cleanup or they might make toys out of recycled items for an animal shelter. On I pledge to respect people in each and every land. The chapters often do the peace pack project where they learn about the culture first and then make the peace packs. There's lots of great learning opportunities in that because they often have to raise the money to get the supplies for that. So it's a really rich opportunity to be philanthropists and to practice all stages of service and what that means. They might also write letters to other kids for peace in another country and they have a pen pal exchange program. On that I pledge to join together as we unite the big and small. We have kids of an older class will join together with a smaller class, the younger class and do a joint reading of books and they often will have a read a peace themed book and they have discussions with that. We also have chapters will unite the big and small having the big being other neighboring nonprofits and the children being the small and the work together for a joint project. Collaboration as I've already mentioned is a really key component in kids for peace and our peace building activities. And then finally I pledge to do my part to create peace for one and all. There's a great book called When I Grow Up I Will Win the Nobel Peace Prize. Okay we'll read that and there's lots of projects that can do based on that and it's getting them thinking about some of the great models that we have in our world. Another project is they've designed peace flags and they have those up around their school as a reminder of their choice to live a peaceful life and to be peace builders. So those are just a couple of hundreds of activities that our kids do. I do want to emphasize a point that we really encourage the children themselves to come up with those activities. So we give them the tools and the opportunity of how to brainstorm and of how to tap into what is meaningful to them and then we have them create the activities and then we support them as adults in making those activities a reality. So on our next slide, I think it's our last slide is this is how we end all of our meetings. We end all of our meetings with let there be peace, yeah. It's a unifying cheer and we send our best wishes for peace out into the world. We absolutely believe that every child is a peace builder and has a capacity to impact positive change and so we do our very best to instill that in them and bring that out in each and every child. And if you're all interested in bringing Kids for Peace to your school or to your neighborhood we would be thrilled to welcome you into the Kids for Peace family, into the whole worldwide peace family and help you to start the chapter. We make it super easy and we make it super fun and of course it's meaningful. So thank you for letting me share quickly of that Kids for Peace. Awesome thank you so much Jill that's so inspiring and what I love especially is this focus on action and getting out there in their community and world and making a difference and I love that you give exact concrete things that they can do it. So it's your great resource for kids to go and in fact we link to your list, we include your list as ideas for young people so that's very exciting thank you. Let's turn, I'd love to turn to Sarah and we'll then have some time for questions afterwards but we're going to take it into the classroom now and I know that Kids for Peace is in the classroom too but we're going to turn to some of the curriculum perspectives. So Sarah I'd love for you to tell us a bit about your experiences in the elementary classroom teaching about global conflict and peace and I'm going to pull up your presentation here for you to speak to. Great thanks and thanks everybody for tuning in, I'm glad to be able to talk about what I've done in the classroom and some other ideas for how you can build peace builders in your classroom. So first of all I'll just start off by saying that I've taught about peace and I always start off with USIP's peace building toolkit. I always ask kids who in the room thinks they're a peace builder and surprisingly not very many kids will raise their hands because the term peace builder just I think to them seems like they're a kid, they can't do that and one of the most thrilling things about going through this curriculum and integrating peace into the classroom is seeing the end result of kids understanding that they can really make a difference in their world. So I'm going to talk to you a little bit about what I did in the classroom so Megan you can zoom in the next one. So I'm going to talk a little bit about I think you can zoom in one more time sorry. I'm going to talk about USIP's peace building toolkit and how I used it and how hopefully you can use it. I'm going to talk about language arts, social studies and then the last I'm going to talk about is classroom community because that's the end result of really where I saw all of this peace building really flourishing and having great impact. So next. So first of all the peace building toolkit for educators was a great resource and like Megan said I went to a training on it and just decided it would be the absolute perfect thing to bring my students together and it really did that and so what I did I just set aside 45 minutes once a week to go through each of the lessons and it took from about the beginning of the school year through winter break and went through each lesson and adapted it for the elementary age kids and they just loved doing it. They were so engaged and as the months went by doing this I just really saw a change in how they treated each other and the respect they had for themselves and our classroom and everybody outside of our classroom. One thing that I definitely did was I modified it for the different students needs. I modified it for special needs. I modified it for the full class and then I taught an enrichment group using the toolkit that was grades 3 through 5 and it's easily modified and adapted to meet your students needs because it's so open and ended and it really allows the students to make of it what they want and to kind of guide the instruction of peace building and thirdly I made sure to connect the principles to the content areas and we're going to talk about that next I think with language art so you can go to the next slide. So in language arts I really made sure to choose texts that explored peace and conflict and the upper elementary level it's really not that hard to find really quality texts that do that and they can be poetry, they can be short stories, they can be novels, whatever you are working on peace and conflict are such a part of a lot of storylines and if you when you're going through the peace building toolkit students start pointing out things that they notice in the text that relates to the curriculum that you're going through and I think it makes language arts instructions more meaningful because not only are kids getting the basic language arts skills but they're also developing their character as well. I always loved literature circles, it's a great time for students to drive their learning and to practice these peace building skills because they each have a job that they have to do week in and week out, they have to be responsible for getting their work done, they have to be respectful of other opinions and it's just a great time for them to discuss and I always like to have great discussion questions that would honestly cause them to possibly have differences of opinion so that they can work through it because not only is that great pedagogy for teaching but that's great for teaching kids how to work through conflict that they have with others and it's a positive conflict that there's not really a negative side effect of working through that. So next is social studies and social studies is really where I used a lot of peace building and discussion of peace and conflict. The first thing I want to point out is to approach topics with sensitivity because a lot of historical things can cause feelings in students that are not always understood by them and so for example I, our fifth grade taught the holocaust and it was one of my favorite units because I saw kids just develop so much in that time that we were teaching it and they just that was really when I noticed that they thought, man I can make a difference like we've read stories of children and young people who against all odds did heroic and courageous things and so the kids saw through that through history that they can make a difference, they can be a peace builder and it was neat to watch them do that. I would also like to showcase how conflict can be positive through those historic examples. A lot of kids think conflict as war, as arguments, but conflict a lot of times leads to a positive change and I'd like to show that and have students analyze those different changes. And then finally we would discuss events and the roles conflict and peace played and I let students brainstorm alternative courses of action that would allow them to kind of think if that were me in that position what could I do differently to make the result a more peaceful result and it was always neat to see that and you'll see that in the modified elementary lessons a little bit that to allow students to think through different role plays and how they could resolve differently. And next is basically the summation of all of these things. When we teach peace to our students I noticed in the classroom community especially how much students really utilized what I was teaching and what the toolkit taught them to do when they saw conflict arise we would work through what we were learning to mediate those conflicts and to make sure that they ended in a peaceful and positive way. Prioritize peace building and allow students the opportunity to try. So for example if students came to me with an argument they come to you with just a conflict instead of trying to just push it aside and say well both of you just have time out or let's just sit down and write our feelings out or whatever I really liked to let students work it out together in a mediation setting that allowed them to practice those skills that we were teaching while still under my eye and with my encouragement and that's really an easy thing for all teachers to be able to do it just takes a little bit of extra time and energy but it's so well worth it. And it's also important to be open to discussing issues as they arise within curriculum and if you're in the middle of a lesson and something comes up especially in language art and social studies I found kids just to have questions like really good deep questions and it's important to not brush them off because as educators we want them to be of course educated the way that our curriculum states but we also it's important to be a role model and to show them that their thoughts are important and their questions are important and they're worth exploring. And so the final thing that I think is probably one of the most important is to celebrate the success that your students have in working through this peace building and celebrate how they interact with each other in a more positive way because celebrating them will really go a long way and encouraging them and helping them to desire to keep doing what they're doing and I think you'll find as you integrate peace building into your curriculum your class will get along so much better it did take time out of my curriculum and schedule to do the peace building toolkit but I think in the end it saved so much time because of instructional time just because kids were getting along we didn't have little spats that they engaged in instead they were getting along and they were encouraging each other we would go on field trips and we always got compliments from anybody that was teaching my students because they just got along so well and I don't credit that to me I credit that to teaching them about peace and the great curriculum that the peace building toolkit offers for us so that's just a little summary and some tips of what you can try in your classroom too. So thanks Megan. You're welcome thank you gosh we have lots of food for thought here and some great fodder so why don't we jump on into questions and please those who are watching please do submit questions I'm just going to remind you how to do so in case you just tuned in now if you go to the upper right hand of the video box you probably will see nine like a little box made up of nine different boxes and if you click on that you'll see a Q&A option so please do use that to submit us questions but of course I have lots of questions for both of you so I thought I would just ask you you've touched on this in lots of different ways but I thought I would just ask you the most basic question which is you know why is it important to engage children elementary school children in learning about peace and taking action for it why do we do this why do you do it and Jill maybe I can start with you sorry you're still on oops still on mute there you go it's a great question and there's so many great answers for that it really is very depending on the child one of the reasons that I think it's important to teach children peace building skills early on is because it makes them happy and it gives them a sense of control of their lives they see things that are happening around them and when they know that they can be part of a positive change a positive solution it really is a comfort to them personally so giving them those tools adds to their whole overall well-being and emotional development I think it's great because kids have fun being peace builders you know as they are doing service activities in their school or community out into the world they feel this greater connection and it really adds to their joy in life so those are the first two reasons that come to mind immediately Sarah? Well I think it's really important to teach kids about peace because they're the next generation that's going to be taking over from us and I think that when you teach kids about peace they do get like Jill said like this sense of pride and accomplishment that they can make a difference and I think that's just so vital to a child's development to know that they are important and by teaching them about peace we're teaching them how to resolve conflicts with each other with larger groups and that's such a vital skill for life I think as adults we encounter conflicts every day and the ability to be open to working those out instead of just ignoring them or getting upset is really vital for all students and whatever their life path takes and especially students who end up being leaders of our town, cities, countries world and so it's just so important to make sure that they have that foundation from a young age. So on that note Sarah I mean I what inspired you then personally to say I want to learn how to come here to USAP first of all but then to also start teaching I mean what as an individual was there something specific that made you want to teach your kids about conflict and peace? Honestly I think my students made me want to teach about conflict and peace seeing I mean as a first year teacher I just was thrown in and at the end of the year you know reflected on things I could do differently and when it came down to it most of the things I could have done differently was how I handled disputes within the classroom and how we remedied a loss of instructional time because of them and so I wanted to get better at that and I mean teaching about peace and conflict really is a big classroom management thing it doesn't seem like right off the bat that that would be the case but I think it is and really why I wanted to do it I wanted to benefit the students and benefit my teaching as well and the more kids learn the more I did it the more I saw what a positive impact it had on them not only in the classroom but in their lives as well. Thanks Jill I would love to hear from you you know as somebody who co-founded with a high school student which is really cool co-founded Kids for Peace what led you both to want to create this organization? I think we were both born to do it so it was part of our divine path to meet each other we met at a neighborhood party and I had a Gandhi pin on and as many people may know there's a great quote by Gandhi that if we are to achieve lasting peace we must begin with the children and she saw my Gandhi pin and came up and spoke to me at this party and we just got into this great conversation about what we wanted for the world and she was definitely very wise and very caring young woman or kid who was a kid at the time and just knew that we wanted to do something to impact the world in a positive way and we knew that we wanted to create a world of peace so just having that desire to create peace and knowing that kids really are the way to go it was a natural fit for us to do that Nice I mean I'll just speak then on my behalf too personally from the Global Peace Building Center here at USIP we are constantly working with young people USIP thinks it's really important to of course engage youth in working for peace and then but also especially the younger youth I think often we think of it and we think older students you know college and maybe upper high school but it's just as important of course to engage elementary school students and Jill I think you gave some really great examples of what kids can do that they're not actually making action for change changing the world for a better place I have a great story if I can share about our USIP our USIP story so kids for peace when we were planning our trip to Washington DC for the Peace Pledge Tour and the kids were all brainstorming the different places they wanted to go and what they wanted to see and where they wanted to present our peace pledge and one of the students wanted to present it at the Institute of Peace and we checked into the programs at the time and they were for older students so this is quite a few years ago and I think it might have been 13 years old and over whereas the majority of our kids are 13 years and younger and so when she read about this she thought gosh that doesn't seem like we got to do something we got to get us kids in here so she without even telling me wrote this really impassioned letter introducing kids for peace and why we should be able to come and visit the United States Institute of Peace and present our peace pledge and she found out that her uncle I believe was her uncle had something to do with the architecture of the Peace Center and so she went through kids to get the letter using contacts being very savvy at the age of 9 or 10 years old and this letter was so beautiful that Anne Louise when she read it was inspired to reach out and said let's bring these kids in and then created a program that was age appropriate for the 12 and under group of kids and all that was going on without me even knowing that she had done this and written it but she just knew that there's a situation we want something and let's go through every opportunity to make that happen and with that courage that she had and with the idea that kids can make a difference that knowing because we empower them to do that to put that all together and created an entire opportunity which maybe was even part of you having younger children be part of it of your programming there so all because of this really great little girl named Mary Grace Feldman I love that story, that's a great story and it kind of leads me into maybe a question we've gotten from our audience which was, it's a great question he said Andrew says do you think some of these action for peace conversations can be too abstract and he's middle school students but I think also elementary students and I think it speaks to some of the things you've been saying of how to make these conversations concrete and how to give concrete ideas for action so I don't know if there's anything either of you wanted to add on about how these conversations can feel more concrete for students and not too abstract. I'll jump in again with that because that's all kids for peace is all based on action and I have found that they really don't like to talk about it much they really want to just tap into doing something about it. We do start with the base of understanding what peace even means to the child so in that sense it's important to define it to have that basic definition so they were all understanding what it is that we're working for and as our, as the children do define it it is this vast it's a vast concept that's there so that part's a little bit abstract but then as they talk about what actions they want to do what to take to create peace then it becomes very tangible and actionable and that makes all the difference. Thanks. Sarah I want to let you answer that if you'd like to but then I also have another question for you. Sure so I think that to make it simpler like Jill said they like to do things so hands-on activities are great which again you'll find a lot of those in the peace voting toolkit but also when you do have discussion like I like to put kids in a circle either as a full class or in like small circles and have like guiding questions instead of like these big overarching questions either have them brainstorm more or as the teacher just give them questions that are more concrete that can guide them towards the more abstract concepts so that they can have concrete answers underneath that umbrella of the abstract concept. Great. I mean on this note it speaks to me of also some of the challenges we might face in working with kids on action and teaching them about conflict and peace and I'm wondering Sarah are there any challenges you've come across and then how have you sort of overcome them? How have you handled them? Sure I mean I think a big challenge is getting kids motivated to want to learn about it because well it is an exciting topic that most kids relate to and want to participate. It's going to be reluctant learners in anything you teach and so that's a huge thing to have to overcome and I think by making the lessons engaging and interesting and trying to get as many kids on board as you can and kind of encouraging the others along that really helped with that problem but again that's just something you'll always find across the board in all subject areas. So that's a major issue I always had and then of course like we just talked about making sure that the concepts are attainable for students and accessible to them and so that means modifying things and that takes time and effort but I think it's really well worth the effort that is put in just as in math how you adapt and modify things for all your different learners is important to modify and adapt this concept as well because it's really going to make a lasting impact on their lives if as a teacher you put in the work to do it. Great, thanks. Jill was there anything you wanted to add in thinking about any specific challenges you thought to mind? I think maybe my brain doesn't work so much this way thinking of challenges I just always think of solutions so from what I've heard from teachers it can be the time, finding the time but a lot of teachers see the benefit so much that even that's not so much of an issue they know finding the time to bring kids for peace into their everyday activities does free up a lot of other time because they aren't having the classroom management issues that some classes have and they're really able to stay on point and focused so I'm kind of trying to make up a challenge I don't, nothing comes to mind. That's great, well maybe you can answer a challenge that I hear, that I sometimes think of and hear about which is this question of how to talk to kids about or give them a sense of what to do about what's happening around the world so things that they hear in the news, things that can be scary how do we talk to children about it and give them a sense that there are people doing things that there are actions one can take even as a child to make a difference I don't know if you have thoughts on that. I do I have thoughts on that because for example when the Ebola crisis was going on in Liberia we actually have chapters in Liberia so we had kids who were being affected by the Ebola crisis and so it was hard to not hear about that because people were afraid in America that it was coming over here so it really became a well known situation that was happening so our kids I would say age, grade three and all were very well aware of it and so as they heard about it they then heard that we had kids who were being affected in our own kids with these chapters and it just added to their level of compassion so it became again not abstract, it wasn't some problem out there but wait these are my friends that are being affected and so then the kids themselves wanted to study it more and learn about it and then they wanted to find out what they can do to help they did money drives to send cash over to the chapters there they also raised and bought masks and some other sanitation items and sent that to the chapters and the kids there were able to send them photos back of receiving that and giving them stories of what's really happening as situation becomes real for the children and then they see they can do something about it, it goes back to them feeling empowered again so they're not feeling helpless, the world's not happening at them or to them but they are part of this global world and they can make it better Sarah did you have anything you wanted to I know you kind of talked about this a little bit too and thinking how do you talk about these topics with sensitivity kind of hits on the same idea I kind of was thrown in whenever I started teaching in DC because the amazing school that I taught at had such rich diversity and taught kids from all around the world that there were several students that would start school they just moved from another country and to have to teach them about things at such a young age it was challenging to be sensitive to where they came from different cultural backgrounds in talking about sensitivity I would choose texts and topics that were easy for them to relate to so I would never really dive into the heavy stuff that you would expect in more of a high school curriculum but exposing them to it like for example I said about teaching the Holocaust and teaching the stories of courage that kids their own age did and so that's really where I started with and I also I guess should add that a lot of times kids do want to take action and so I always encourage them like there are big things going on in the world and the people that are working for peace in those big events are they once were kids too and they learned the same skills that you're learning and it's important for you to be doing this so when you practice with a friend or when you have a conflict with somebody who doesn't know about how to be a peace builder you're teaching them how to be a peace builder so your impact can stretch so far because you're teaching your friends that also are kids just like you how to build peace and how to manage conflicts and resolve them in a positive way and I think that is a really cool thing for kids to realize that their impact stretches so far when they just take small steps one of the things we try to do a lot here is share the stories of peace builders to try to make it concrete and to help especially peace builders that are relatable because it often can feel like Sarah I think you had mentioned sort of as you when you talk about peace builders they don't think kids people don't always think of themselves as one initially think of the famous people so one of the new things we're starting to do now is called it's a campaign called hashtag everyday peace builders but it's a way for us to try to share the stories of the everyday peace builders that are out there including children people who are doing this work but not as a job but it's something that they do every day through someone of their actions because it's we work with so many wonderful people at the institute not everybody knows about them so this is our attempt to share the stories of these peace builders so as you can say you can identify you can see that you have similar qualities so stay tuned you'll all be seeing a lot of everyday peace builders coming out of the global peace building center I'd love to hear from both of you about what skills you think are kind of some of the most important skills for young people learning if you had to choose sort of a top three what would you say are the important skills that kids need to develop to be peace builders sort of in this third to fifth grade age group and you've given some ideas but if you have any additional ideas for how one example of how they could develop that skill that would be great would you like to start? yes I'm three let's see just a number I tossed out so feel free I think the first thing that comes to mind is optimism I'm not sure if that's a skill maybe that's more of an attitude but I do also see it as a skill a crucial part of being a peace builder to stay eternally optimistic which leads to them knowing that they can do anything so optimism skill slash attitude is essential and as adults we can really help to build them up to have that optimism and to feel successful which at least their own self esteem so optimism and tenacity I think I don't know if that's quite a skill either but also an attitude or a way of life to never give up until you need to move on knowing the difference but to really know that you got to stick with something and be you know that determination is essential and then the third I don't know if it's a skill either but visionary to really help their imagination imagine the world that they want to live in because as they have that vision or the imagination for this world they can put their optimism and their tenacity and the other hard skills that they're learning into action but the vision vision or imagination tenacity and optimism with the being infused with those that take some life. Thanks Sarah Sure first of all I love what Jill just shared that's so great so many great ideas I think I guess tangible things that I would teach students and hope that they would learn or to listen first of all it's so important to be able to listen to others and then that leads into being able to relate to them and understand their perspective so analyzing different perspectives is really important for them to get outside of themselves and really see where others are coming from because when you understand where others are coming from in a conflict then you can find a path that can merge your paths together and I guess come to a better positive resolution and I guess third compassion I think students and children when they're compassionate towards others that's kind of taking that understanding to a new level is when you are just how you treat others and how you expect to be treated obviously and when you treat others with respect and we are compassionate towards them that really goes a long way in bridging the divides that conflicts can cause Thanks one thing that I think of immediately too and I think you've covered so many of the things that I would say but one thing that I've heard a theme kind of run throughout some of this conversation as well is sort of thinking about conflict a little differently and so the skill of really developing a better understanding of conflict is really important of not being afraid of conflict but thinking about it as something that you can handle and manage and that it could be a positive thing and I think that's something that we don't get taught in schools and so it's or if you're lucky you do I didn't get taught that so helping students really develop that skill of conflict analysis really being able to understand conflicts and then understanding you know developing those skills then to do something with conflicts when they come up so this is where Sarah the good listening comes in active listening skills but then also that optimism and being visionary and tenacity to sort of work your way through the conflict to come up to collaborate on a solution and these are all skills that kids can learn you know at seven years old so that's sort of what we think of too in what we try to do here we have gosh we're in our almost final five minutes here it flew by I think I'm gonna I'd love to just close this out maybe with one great story so I'd love to hear if you each have maybe one student or a great story about a student or a couple students you don't need to say names but of who we're peace builders something that a great favorite peace builder story of yours and Jill I know we got a few from you already but I just think it's a nice way to end out the hour with the story so Jill do you want to kick us off yes so there's so many great stories there's the one boy I'll call him Daniel he was a fifth grade boy and he was chronically in trouble at school he spent most of his days in the in the principal's office wasn't he just was in trouble all the time and his classroom was a kids review classroom and I just saw that little special spark in him and started giving opportunities to take leadership roles and to be a spokes kid for different projects we were doing and as he became emboldened and saw that he could be seen as more than a troublemaker at school he really relaxed into himself and started letting his better angels shine through and really started taking a different leadership role in his classroom and carried over and so by the end of the year he was selected as the student of the year and he went from being in the principal's office almost every day to being a shining example and it was just it just reminds me that when we see the best in our children and give them the opportunity to be their natural peace builders that they rise up and it's a beautiful thing so that was Daniel that's a great story Sarah so again so many great stories of just such inspiring children one in particular my third year of teaching had this sweet child who just was not confident and would barely write a sentence coming to me in fifth grade I mean he could like the skill set was there he just had trouble he just was really self conscious of everything that he did and threw a lot of encouragement and he really got involved in our peace building curriculum and he loved it and because he was just such a kind soul that everybody loved and so he really got into it and I think as he again had that confidence building in him that he could do something positive and that others respected him no joke by the end of the year he was writing a five paragraph thesis based essay and a lot of that had to do with the fact that he found something he was really good at and really passionate about and just had confidence that hadn't been there before and I think that's a great thing that peace building can do for kids give them so much confidence and know that they're important thank you gosh what a wonderful note to end on thank you both so much there are stories like this out the wazoo and I'm so glad that we can gather these stories and share them and I know we see them every day so I'm glad we can share it with everyone here thank you both so much Sarah and Jill for joining us today it was wonderful thank you and I found it was an engaging inspiring hour and I'm leaving with lots of new ideas and I'm sure our audience is as well and I want to thank you both for your dedication to educating and nurturing our youngest peace builders especially because it's teacher appreciation week and so we're thanking the educators amongst us so for those watching you can find Sarah's newly adapted lesson plans on our website so it is on www.buildingpeace.org under educator resources so you're launching this today and so if you go there you'll see them under educator resources once again the website is www.buildingpeace.org we'll also put a link to it on the event page for this event on our website you can find additional lesson plans, book lists, multimedia and activities that introduce children and youth to equal peace building concepts and skills so please check it out and since we hope you are now really inspired to engage young people in your life in building peace and perhaps inspired to take action yourself we encourage you to stay tuned to take up this year's peace day challenge in honor of the International Day of Peace that's September 21st so you have plenty of time to think about what you're going to do so please stay tuned for more information which we'll share on our website as well so to everyone in our audience and to our two guests thank you for joining us this afternoon to all the teachers in our audience thank you for everything that you do your work helps students gain the knowledge and skills they need to make a positive difference in this world so here at the US Institute of Peace where our vision is a world without violent conflict we really appreciate your effort to show children that peace is possible and practical and within their abilities to create so especially this teacher appreciation week but every other week of the year as well so thank you all thank you to Jill and Sarah again and we'll see you in our next webinar thanks everybody