SPI Online 2020

Frank Dukes and Leanne Nurse

Live online course dates and times:

• May 13, 20, 27: 1pm - 4:30pm (EDT) 
• June 3, 10: 1pm - 4:30pm (EDT)

If you are not on the east coast of the US, click here and add your city/country to see the time difference.

Throughout the world, we see growing recognition of the ongoing harm of many monuments, memorials, contaminated areas, sites of violence, and other spaces identified with histories of oppression. “Transforming Community Spaces” (TCS) is a course to help institutions and communities take on these challenging sites through inclusive, transparent community engagement that uncovers hidden histories, advances social justice, and promotes collective healing. 

Discover the challenges and opportunities of problematic community spaces. Discuss the principles and practices of “equitable collaboration”, including being trauma-informed, inclusive, responsive, truth-seeking, deliberative and adaptive. Participants will have access to an online Toolkit (click here) to help them navigate these challenging conflicts.

This online course will include weekly lectures, case studies, group discussions, films, and class exercises. 

Other small group sessions to be arranged by students as required.

Syllabus

Lisa Schirch

Live online course dates and times:

• May 11, 15, 18, 22, 25, 29: 11:00am - 1:30pm (EDT)
• June 1, 5, 8, 12: 11:00am - 1:30pm (EDT)

If you are not on the east coast of the US, click here and add your city/country to see the time difference.

Social media and other new technologies are profoundly reshaping the way we see and participate in the world, impacting democratic institutions, social cohesion, and conflict. Learn how technology offers new tools for organizing social movements and creates new opportunities for both digital peacebuilding as well as digital terror. The course begins with an analysis of two comprehensive frameworks for analyzing violent extremism and technology.

Through this unique online experience, you will:

• Gain skills for “digital peacebuilding” to help you respond online to digital disinformation, hate speech, and polarizing comments.
• Experiment in designing “digital peacebuilding” programs to use in your own context.
• Engage in interactive exercises to explore how the profit model driving these new technologies thrives on spreading disinformation and hate.
• Participate in exciting peace tech innovations.
• Analyze case studies and examples of best practices for using social media to support peacebuilding.

This online course will include weekly lectures, case studies, group discussions, films, and class exercises.

Other small group sessions to be arranged by students as required.

Syllabus

Kathy Evans and Martha Brown

Live online course dates and times:

• May 19, 21, 26, 28: 10am - 2pm (EDT) 
• June 1 - 5: Flexible, set by class for practice circles (EDT)
• June 9, 11: 10am - 2pm (EDT)

If you are not on the east coast of the US, click here and add your city/country to see the time difference.

The Peacemaking Circle is a process combining ancient wisdom about living in community with modern understandings about complex multicultural societies. The Circle process can be implemented as a way to build and strengthen relationships, engage with difficult conversations, address conflict, and create more effective learning communities. Circle processes are a central practice for developing and practicing social and emotional skills. In these times of prolonged physical isolation, translating these skills to an online framework is important. 

This course will provide an understanding of the foundational values and key structural elements of the Circle process as well as provide an experience with Peacemaking Circles. Practical understanding will center around the use of Circles in schools, families, social services, faith communities, workplaces, neighborhoods, and the justice system. Participants will learn to design and facilitate in-person and online Circles for community building, conflict resolution, and an increasing commitment to the common good. Special emphasis in this course will focus on discussing the differences and difficulties that accompany in-person and on line circles. 

In addition to learning about the guiding principles of the Circle process, participants will have the opportunity to practice facilitating Circles and garnering feedback from the instructor and their colleagues.

Other small group sessions to be arranged by students as required.

Syllabus

Catherine Barnes

Live online course dates and times:

• May 13, 20, 27: 10am - 1pm (EDT) 
• June 3, 10: 10am - 1pm (EDT)

If you are not on the east coast of the US, click here and add your city/country to see the time difference.

Many of the systems in which we live and work are dysfunctional and mired in conflict. One strategy for transforming them is through deliberative dialogue processes that engage the whole system. Such processes can enable us to respond creatively to our most complex challenges and move us toward more equitable, just and positive relationships and structures. This class is for experienced leaders and conflict transformation practitioners aiming to take their knowledge of process design to the next level. We will learn principles and methods to:

• cultivate dialogue to promote understanding;
  
• jointly analyze challenges, generate creative and innovative solutions, and envision a shared future through deliberation.
  
• generate ownership and enthusiasm through consensus building and participatory decision-making.
  

This class will consist of weekly online discussions and exercises in ‘real time’, supported with course lectures, videos, readings and exercises that participants can engage throughout each week in their own time.

Participants will use a series of structured exercises to workshop a specific situation in their
context to prepare a hypothetical or real process design.

Participants from an organization or shared context are encouraged to enroll as teams to strategize and design a process for their context. 

Participants will also experience and learn innovative platforms and tools for facilitating online,especially valuable during this time of ‘online all the time’ meetings.

 Other small group sessions to be arranged by students as required.

Alma Jadallah

Live online course dates and times:

• Saturdays, May 16, 23, and June 6: 10am - 2pm (EDT)

If you are not on the east coast of the US, click here and add your city/country to see the time difference.

Many practitioners and peacebuilders are motivated by bringing peace to their communities and initiating the desired change through peaceful resolution of conflict. They play a variety of peacebuilding roles, but they are not immune in finding themselves involved, engaged and even driving organizational conflicts either in the organization that they are members of, or in the communities that they serve. 

This online training course is for individuals who are interested in understanding and evaluating organizational conflicts that may have their roots in interpersonal conflicts, group dynamics, and broader systemic issues. Dimensions of gender, race, ethnicity, culture, diversity, and identity conflicts are covered. 

This training is a highly interactive course based on actual workplace issues facing peacebuilders and practitioners across the globe. 

Participants will learn how to:

• Prepare an assessment of the conflict, including mapping stakeholders, and how to build guiding coalitions and protocols
• Conduct an organizational assessment (climate and workplace culture) and develop qualitative and quantitative tools to gather data.
• Create reporting techniques on collected data and write actionable recommendations that will lead to the formulation of problem-solving teams to resolve the conflict

Other small group sessions to be arranged by students as required.

Syllabus

Kajungu Maturi and Dana Coles

Live online course dates and times:

• May 11, 14, 18, 21, 25, 28: 8am - 10am (EDT) 
• June 1, 4, 8, 11: 8am - 10am (EDT)

If you are not on the east coast of the US, click here and add your city/country to see the time difference.

Restorative justice is a system of justice that believes crimes and violence cause harm to people, relationships, and community.  To move forward in life, we have to repair the harms that have been caused. This course provides an introductory examination of the values, principles, and practices of restorative justice and how restorative justice differs from our current punishment-based system of justice. 

Restorative Justice is not just a list of specific programs or a clear blueprint for systemic change. Instead, it is a theory, social movement, and set of practices that requires a radically different way of viewing, understanding, and responding to individual and collective harms and needs. Participants will explore how restorative justice

• Presents a philosophy of justice that addresses the needs of multiple stakeholders, including the victim, the community, and the offender
• Draws from faith-based and indigenous approaches
• Challenges interpersonal and structural forms of harm. 

We will examine restorative justice through a diverse set of practical and theoretical lenses, inquiries including racial justice, trauma healing, education, community development, and transitional justice. This course will equip participants to:  

• Compare and contrast multiple practices of justice, and their personal and social impacts. 
• Explain concepts, principles, and values of restorative justice (RJ) to various audiences. 
• Describe primary models of RJ practice generally, and in relation to specific settings.
• Identify and analyze critical issues in the RJ field, and articulate potential solutions. 
• Apply RJ to a variety of cases and contexts, integrating analysis of the needs of stakeholders and multiple dimensions of differences such as class, race and gender.

Other small group sessions to be arranged by students as required.

Course Outline

Al Fuertes

Live online course dates and times:

• May 12, 14, 19, 21, 26, 28: 2pm - 4pm (EDT) 
• June 2, 4, 9, 11: 2pm - 4pm (EDT)

If you are not on the east coast of the US, click here and add your city/country to see the time difference.

Whether or not you directly feel it, you and/or those around you have been traumatized by the global crisis of COVID-19. In these difficult times, there is a need for all of us to recognize trauma within ourselves and others, and learn how to address that trauma, become resilient individuals, and heal in order to move on with our lives.  

The design of this training is two-fold: 

• To provide participants with an overview of the complex issues of trauma and the dynamics of resilience and healing in general, and the Covid-19 pandemic in particular. Participants will explore the theoretical bases of trauma, resilience, and healing through narratives and case examples on personal, domestic, and international levels. 
• To explore and examine effective and contextualized practices, as part of skills development, in responding to deep personal/collective loss, pain and suffering within household, workplace, and social settings toward healing.  

It is expected that participants will bring a general understanding of these issues and be prepared to address them theoretically and practically.  Learning process for this course involves an online collaborative and interactive effort by the facilitator and participants through a format which includes teaching moments, breakout sessions, reflections, storytelling, sharing/discussions, and pro-active/re-entry planning.

Other small group sessions to be arranged by students as required.

Gloria Rhodes

Live online course dates and times: Mondays and Wednesdays

• May 11, 13, 18, 20, 25, 27: 10am - 12pm (EDT) 
• June 1, 3, 8, 10: 10am - 12pm (EDT)

If you are not on the east coast of the US, click here and add your city/country to see the time difference.

Analysis focuses on understanding the factors that cause conflict and violence and those that support peacebuilding and social justice. Good conflict analysis skills are a central component of designing effective strategies for conflict transformation and constructive social change.

In this online course, we will engage with each other and with course materials (readings, video, assignments and activities) both simultaneously in real time (synchronous) and on our own schedule (asynchronous).  We’ll use practical lenses for analysis including identity (gender, religion, nationality, etc.), human needs, narratives, power, culture, worldview, and others to understand conflict and propose possibilities for change. Case studies of conflicts at multiple social levels (personal, relational, structural, cultural) will provide content and an opportunity to practice analysis skills. Participants will also practice self-analysis skills by paying attention to their own roles and biases in conflicts and how that affects their ability to “see” and describe conflict from different perspectives. The class will also focus on research strategies for gathering and organizing data and developing theories of change as an intermediate step from analysis to designing effective social change.  For the final project, participants will select a situation and conduct their own analysis.

Other small group sessions to be arranged by students as required.

Syllabus

Carolyn Stauffer

Live online course dates and times: Tuesdays and Thursdays

• May 12, 14, 19, 21, 26: 11am - 1pm (EDT) 
• May 28: 11am - 2pm (EDT)

If you are not on the east coast of the US, click here and add your city/country to see the time difference.

Complex, dynamic and frequently chaotic environments are the norm for today’s leaders. Few if any leaders have the luxury of predictability or constant equilibrium. To maintain an organization in difficult times, leaders must develop the ability to maximize opportunities, to leverage uncertainty, and keep morale high. 

This course pairs Appreciative Inquiry with Critical Theory approaches to learn about balancing the contradictory impulses of disruption and integration. Together we explore the forward-reaching capacities leaders need in order to thrive amidst the paradox and turbulence of the future. 

Other small group sessions to be arranged by students as required.

Syllabus

Carl Stauffer and Thalia Gonzalez

Live online course dates and times: Tuesdays and Thursdays

• May 12, 14, 19, 21, 26: 2pm - 4pm (EDT) 
• May 28: 2pm - 5pm (EDT)

If you are not on the east coast of the US, click here and add your city/country to see the time difference.

This course provides an introductory examination of the values, principles, and practices of restorative justice. Restorative justice is not a list of specific programs or a clear blueprint for systemic change. Instead, it is a theory, social movement, and set of practices that requires a radically different way of viewing, understanding, and responding to individual and collective harms and needs. We explore how restorative justice presents an alternative philosophy of justice that addresses the needs of multiple stakeholders, draws from faith-based and indigenous approaches, and challenges interpersonal and structural forms of harm. Given its complex, multidimensional nature, this course will examine restorative justice through a diverse set of scholarly and practice, inquiries including racial justice, trauma healing, education, community development, and transitional justice.

Other small group sessions to be arranged by students as required.

Syllabus

Gloria Rhodes and Sidney Morgan

Live online course dates and times: Mondays and Wednesdays

• May 11, 13, 18, 20, 25, 27: 1:30pm - 3:30pm (EDT) 
• June 1, 3, 8, 10: 1:30pm - 3:30pm (EDT)

If you are not on the east coast of the US, click here and add your city/country to see the time difference.

As individuals working for peace, social justice, reduction of violence, and the possibility of reconciliation, we are the instruments of the work. How can we best prepare ourselves to take constructive action whether in a professional role or in a personal relationship?  This course will explore four areas of awareness and accountability essential for effectiveness in our action efforts. These areas of content and engagement, described more fully in the syllabus, are 

• Self-awareness
• Self-assessment
• Self-management
• Self and community care. 

In focusing on these four areas, we will consider the roles we play, the skills we have and need, and the processes available to us for doing the work.  

The intensive on-line experience will make use of live instruction and conversation, video inputs, personal action and reflection, paired and plenary discussion, demonstration, and a sampling of non-traditional forms of learning and integration (e.g arts-based methods, play, music/rhythm, etc). We will also plan and practice (as appropriate) selected strategies for structuring conversations and decision-making. Course participants will strengthen their abilities to understand and manage self, attend to self/communal care, and assess appropriateness of action. And in this unusual time globally, we will practice and reflect on physical, intellectual, emotional, social and spiritual elements of well-being and growth.

 Other small group sessions to be arranged by students as required.

Syllabus