Levermore Global Scholars in the “Children, Peace and Violence” Freshman Seminar worked with the Promise Project, Inc. to implement a project on violence prevention. Students first learned about violence among children, bullying, and gangs and then carried out research on violence among youth in the surrounding communities. After these preliminary steps, students wrote a proposal to lessen violence among children. Emphasizing commonality among children, peaceful conflict resolution and artistic expression, LGS scholars spent December 9th facilitating workshops and working on a peace quilt with students at a local middle school.

LGS Scholars started their day with an ice breaker in order to get everyone in a good mood. Students were asked to stand in a circle, with only one person standing in the middle. Whoever was in the middle was asked to state their name and mention one thing that they had done that day. Once the individual was done speaking, students that have had also done something similar were asked to move inside the circle. The last person to fit into the circle had to restart the game. This game was designed to open up scholars’ lesson and show their audience that they all have many things in common.

After the ice breaker, LGS Scholars taught a lesson on diversity, tolerance, and peaceful ways of expressing their emotions. Students were asked to define ‘diversity’ and ‘tolerance’ and then discussed the importance of both of these concepts. Then, LGS Scholars asked students to write about a time when they were offended by of felt angry at someone because they were treated differently due to their identity. Then, students were asked to put their responses into a secret box, which was set aside until the next activity was completed.

Next, LGS scholars passed out arts and crafts materials and asked students to decorate a fabric square with the available materials in a way that would represent their lives. Students were excited to participate in this part of the workshop and created beautiful decorations, which were then used to make the Peace Quilt. Then, LGS scholars read all of the incidents of students being angry or offended from the secret box and discussed positive ways of dealing with emotions. Students realized that other people feel hurt, frustration and anger when they are mistreated, and sometimes express their emotions with violence. Thus, retaliating in a similar fashion is not the answer to this deep-rooted problem of intolerance. Instead, it is essential to stress positive ways of dealing with anger and frustration and respecting other people because there are many more commonalities among people than differences.