1.1 Making a start
In Session 1 you considered what peace meant to you. The next activity invites you to find out what peace means for other members of your educational community.
Activity 1 What does peace look like for us?
Take a moment to think deeply about the three questions below. You might sketch some initial thoughts here, but you can also return to the questions over a much longer time period, giving yourself an opportunity to reflect on them as you engage with your everyday activities in your setting.
Once you have carried out this activity for yourself, consider how you might encourage others in your educational community to engage with these questions. This will depend on your role in the school and sphere of influence.
- What would peace look like in your educational community?
- What can disrupt the peace of your educational community?
- Where does the energy for peace come from in your community (peace-making/keeping/building)?
Discussion
Peace might mean different things to different people, so exploring what peace might look like for the people in your educational community is a helpful first step in a peace journey. Depending on your role in the school, this step might be taken in a small way, perhaps just in your classroom or immediate setting, or it might be a much bigger endeavour, involving a range of groups in the school community.
It’s impossible to predict the kinds of challenges that school communities might face, so activities such as these are important for starting reflections and conversations about peace in school settings.
CPD sessions
If doing this activity with a group, you might allow time for participants to begin working with the questions independently before sharing in pairs, then pairs joining into fours, then eights and so on until you are back to working as a whole group.
Remember that all school communities are diverse in terms of their communicative needs, so questions might need adapting or translating into different languages. Responses to questions should be accepted in whatever form participants are comfortable with. The time it may take to fully understand what members of a school community are saying is time well spent.
Exploring what peace might mean for a whole school community can also be a great opportunity for a school council to work meaningfully together with senior leaders and parents. So, whilst these questions may seem small, they can be used to spark peace in a school community in a range of inspiring ways.