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Principles and practices of peace education
Principles and practices of peace education

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2.1 Affirming others

Being able to affirm oneself is important for children and young people’s self-esteem. Part of social wellbeing is to be able to affirm others, to establish and maintain positive, supportive relationships.

Below are images of ‘Pick Up Cards’, used in an example of an activity for younger children from the Quakers in Britain Peace Week Pack. This activity works well for younger children.

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Figure 2 ‘Pick Up Cards’ from a Peace Week activity

The card on the right shows the learning intention. In an activity like this, children work in pairs to create a card for another child that they can use as a ‘pick up’ whenever they need it.

Developing skills in affirming the self and others can be more challenging for young people of secondary school age. The image below is a screenshot from a video of students at Elizabeth Garrett School which you will watch in full in Session 5. In this activity the students explore the many facets of their identities in ways that create opportunities for self-affirmation and offering affirmations to others. As you will see when you watch the full video in Session 5, the session was carefully planned with the teacher first modelling her expectations to the students. It is also important that Elizabeth Garrett School actively promotes and maintains positive and affirming relationships in the context of their work to be an explicitly anti-racist school.

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Figure 3 A secondary school student explores their identity

Activities that ask children and young people to share personal information, such as their sense of their identity, their feelings or family circumstances should take place in carefully managed safe spaces where all participants have agreed ground rules of respect and confidentiality. No one should be expected to share any aspect of their identity that they wish to remain private, and children and young people should be supported in making careful decisions about how much they wish to participate. Here, steady, patient and careful work to build strong and trusting relationships between all members of educational communities is essential.

Educators often affirm children and young people, but the skill of affirming others can also be modelled by adults in school, thanking each other and demonstrating an appreciation of colleagues’ work. These everyday actions can help build that positive ethos of social wellbeing where affirming oneself and others is part of the everyday practice of the school community.