Courses at SPI 2019

Gloria Rhodes

Analysis focuses on understanding the factors that cause conflict and violence and those that support peacebuilding. Good conflict analysis skills are a central component of designing effective strategies for transforming conflict and building peace.

Course participants will use lenses 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 levels will provide content and an opportunity to practice analysis skills individually and in small groups. Participants will become more aware of their own roles and biases in conflicts through self-analysis and will develop 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.

This course is being offered for training and for academic credit. The syllabus details the number of credits hours and associated course requirements.

 Syllabus

Katie Mansfield and Johonna Turner

During STAR Level II participants are invited to:

• Share STAR experiences from your context with each other.
• Review the core concepts of STAR and the 3-part STAR snail model, using Village STAR, a practical and simply illustrated manual.
• Practice exercises and skills that promote healing and build resilience.
• Plan and receive feedback on how you will engage STAR concepts and tools.
• Reflect on your own position, power, and challenges as a STAR practitioner.
• Envision and understand how to shape structural and organizational change toward trauma-informed, resilient organizations and communities.

The Level II training includes additional content, exercises, and skills for addressing trauma and building resilience to deepen the experiences from STAR I. Participants will create and present action plans about how they will adapt and apply STAR concepts and pedagogy within their work and life contexts. Upon completing STAR II, participants are invited to join the STAR online learning community, a group of STAR Practitioners working in a variety of contexts, sharing their questions, learnings, and experiences.

Participants must have applied STAR concepts personally or professionally since completion of STAR Level I training (normally for a period of about 3-6 months).

Syllabus

Kay Pranis

The Peacemaking Circle is a dialog process combining ancient wisdom about living in community with modern understandings about complex multicultural societies. The process is used for holding difficult conversations and for strengthening relationships within a group. This course will provide experience in the Peacemaking Circle process as well as an understanding of the foundational values and key structural elements of the process. Participants will learn to design and conduct Peacemaking Circles.

Respectful dialogue across significant differences in life experience and perspective is one of the most pressing needs of our time. The Peacemaking Circle process offers a highly accessible and flexible approach for discussion of the most fraught topics. In this time of highly polarized public conversations, people are coming together in Circles to talk about the most difficult issues – police/community relations, childhood sexual abuse, racial inequities, crime and violence, historical trauma, European unity – in a way that maintains respect and nurtures understanding of one another.

Beyond helping people recognize and honor differences, the Peacemaking Circle process allows people to recognize common ground and shared values. Circles build strong, healthy relationships in a group of people – giving everyone a voice, honoring the importance of each member of a community, and creating a sense of belonging for everyone.

This course will explore the values and philosophy that provide the foundation of the Peacemaking Circle process, acknowledging its indigenous origins. It will also analyze the structure of the Peacemaking Circle process and describe a variety of types of Circles. The course will provide examples of the use of the process in schools, families, social services, faith communities, workplaces, neighborhoods, and the justice system. Participants will learn to design and conduct Peacemaking Circles for community building, conflict resolution and increasing commitment to the common good. Both philosophy and practice will be addressed. The course will be conducted in the Peacemaking Circle format and will be highly interactive, using the life experiences of all the participants as a teaching resource. Special attention will be given to the role of the facilitator and the key skills of Circle facilitation.

This course is being offered for training and for academic credit. The syllabus details the number of credits hours and associated course requirements.

Syllabus

One of the primary responsibilities of organizational leaders is leading organizational change. This course is designed to equip organizational leaders (at any level) with the tools and skills they need to lead adaptive change processes, either within their organizations or their communities.

Participants will review a broad range of leadership and management theories and practices, identifying various approaches to leading people and systems in ways that bring restoration, offer hope, and build sustainability. The core management skills of managing people and resources will also be addressed.

This course is being offered for training and for academic credit. The syllabus details the number of credits hours and associated course requirements.

Syllabus

Gloria Rhodes

As individuals working for peace, social justice, and the reduction of violence, we are the instrument of the work. Therefore, we need to cultivate our ability to engage conflict and injustice with wisdom, compassion, and clarity.

Participants will strengthen their abilities to understand and manage self and to attend to self-care, to listen and communicate, create and maintain healthy boundaries, recognize and promote diversity, lead from their vision and values, and engage people in dialogue and decision-making. The course will survey leadership roles, key skills, systematic processes, and varied contexts within the broad field of peacebuilding and conflict resolution/transformation. Contemporary strategies for structuring conversations and decision-making, including arts-based approaches, will be explored along with traditional processes of negotiation, mediation, and facilitation.  

Course participants will gain a holistic understanding of self as person, practitioner, and leader, with emphasis on the importance of intellectual, emotional, physical, and spiritual well-being and growth.

This course is being offered for training and for academic credit. The syllabus details the number of credits hours and associated course requirements.

Syllabus

Judah Oudshoorn and Michelle Jackett

This course provides a critical examination of the values, principles, and practices of restorative justice. It provides a unique opportunity to explore both the promise and the challenge of the restorative justice field in various contexts and from diverse perspectives. We examine how restorative justice presents a 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. Our primary starting point is the Western criminal legal system and the problems posed by its dominant responses to crime and violence. However, there will be opportunities for participants to analyze the concepts of restorative justice as applied to their own contexts.

Participants will also explore intersections and applications of restorative justice with other practice fields and movements including racial justice, trauma healing, and healing historical harms.

This course is being offered for training and for academic credit. The syllabus details the number of credits hours and associated course requirements.

Syllabus

Hizkias Assefa

This course will explore the concepts of forgiveness and reconciliation, their various components, and the place they occupy in the spectrum of the various social science conflict-handling mechanisms. It will examine the concepts from different philosophical, cultural, and disciplinary perspectives, while  looking at how they have been used for healing interpersonal relationships, as well as addressing large-scale social (political, inter-ethnic or international) conflicts. Although the main emphasis will be on social conflicts, the personal, psychological, spiritual and ecological dimensions of forgiveness and reconciliation and their interrelationships with one another will be explored. The course will involve lectures, discussion, group work, student presentations, and writing assignments.

There are many methods for creating and facilitating trainings. In order to create a training that will not only be delivered successfully, but where knowledge is retained, the facilitator needs to know the learners in the training, their experiences, and their own needs and interests  for the training. This course begins with the premise that learners must be empowered to learn in a way that works for them, and that traditional educational methods simply are not well-suited to learning that lasts beyond the event itself.

This course is being offered for training and for academic credit. The syllabus details the number of credits hours and associated course requirements.

Syllabus

The course addresses the importance of trustbuilding in the creation of healthy relationships and communities. To do this, trustbuilders have to be self-aware, honor their own dignity and that of others, and understand the historical and socio-cultural context in which they work. It is also important for them to provide safe spaces for relationships to develop and meaningful dialogues to take place.

Course participants will explore these critical issues along with the roles of identity and trauma in the trustbuilding process. Emotional and cognitive empathy will also be examined as critical factors in establishing bonds of trust. Additionally, building diverse teams and networks will be highlighted regarding their role in dealing with complex issues of race, culture, religion, and politics, and how to develop just and sustainable relationships and communities.

Syllabus

David Ragland, Jodie Geddes and Lenore Bajare-Dukes

“Truth-telling” is paramount in the quest for justice, particularly against the backdrop of silenced historical harm.  This course grapples with the form and function of truth telling in the pursuit of justice and critically explores linkages between the two. We will survey and analyze historical approaches to truth-telling in the international context, whether in the context of truth commissions or indigenous practices.  Of particular interest in this course are the emerging truth-telling, racial healing and reparations initiatives in the United States to address racial violence against African-Americans. Together, using restorative justice-based and critical race pedagogical approaches, we will grapple with the following questions and more:

• What does truth-telling mean in the quest for justice?
• How has truth-telling looked in historical international contexts and how is it  looking in the contemporary domestic context?
• What form have truth and reconciliation processes taken historically?
• How do we distinguish restorative justice-based truth-telling processes from historical transitional justice processes?  
• How might we envision a restorative justice-based truth, racial healing and reparations process to address racial violence in the US against African-Americans?  
   

This course is being offered for training and for academic credit. The syllabus details the number of credits hours and associated course requirements.

This course focuses on how to design and facilitate the social change process at a community level. We will learn from  strategies participants have already been using and learn new strategies in community building and organizing. The course explores traditional Alinsky organizing and transformative approaches to organizing that include those based on social movements and the work of Paulo Freire. We will learn advances in social networking and community building that influence how communities organize today. Participants will learn social change processes on two continua—strengths versus needs and collaborative versus confrontational approaches. Across approaches, students learn to design and implement each phase of the social change process with a core group of the affected community, from framing an issue through assessment and power analysis to mobilizing and empowering community actors to affect short and long-term change.

Participants will develop skills in issue identification, civic engagement, empowerment, and inclusion. Participants will examine various new approaches to engagement, from social networking to community building. Recognizing that everyday people and historically oppressed groups are often excluded or ignored in current political processes, this course will explore strategies for transforming systems and the mental models that maintain them.

Syllabus

Do you ever think you need to go beyond basic meeting facilitation to design processes that will help groups to address challenging situations, deal with differences, and envision a better future?  To create processes that will help to transform conflicts and facilitate justice? This class is intended for people with some experience of facilitation who want to take their skills to the next level. We will:

• Design processes that are appropriate for the context and will help the group achieve their goals, including focusing on the difference between designing one-off events and complex, multi-stage processes.
• Understand theories and methods underpinning processes aimed at transformation and justice.
• Explore how to engage key stakeholders, define the purpose, frame the focus, create a strong container, and select process methods for conflict-sensitive, dialogue-based  transformation.
• Work with methods designed to promote understanding and build relationships through dialogue; methods designed to foster shared analysis and envision innovative solutions through deliberation; and methods for participatory decision-making.

Exercises throughout the week will enable participants – including those who enroll as teams – to begin to design a real world process for their context.

This course is being offered for training and for academic credit. The syllabus details the number of credits hours and associated course requirements.

Syllabus

Lisa Schirch

Participants will practice using a systems-based approach that explores 25 theories of change that correlate with violent extremism and compare three paradigms of response including counterterrorism, countering violent extremism (CVE), and peacebuilding. Using scenario-based learning, lectures, and case studies, participants will learn practical skills for programming a wide range of potential responses to violent extremism.

The course uses case studies of violent extremism from a wide range of contexts, including white nationalism in the US. Drawing from her 2018 edited book, The Ecology of Violent Extremism, the course includes readings by practitioners and researchers from around the world.

Syllabus

Katie Mansfield and Joy Kreider

Traumatic events impact how individuals and groups think, feel, and behave as well as how societies are organized. Unhealed trauma often leads to violence and violence causes more violence as victims act out against others or become self-destructive. Created to help those who work with individuals, groups, or communities suffering from current or historic trauma, the STAR training presents – in both theory and practice – an integrated approach to understanding the trauma, conflict, and violence caused by nature, human beings, and/or structural systems.

STAR is for those who want to bring a trauma-informed perspective to their work. The course brings together learnings from neurobiology, conflict transformation, human security, spirituality and restorative justice to:

• Increase awareness of the impact of trauma on the body/brain, beliefs and behavior of individuals, communities and societies;
• Offer tools and processes for addressing trauma and breaking cycles of violence;
• Explore ways of building individual and collective resilience, including self-care strategies.
• Discuss meta-level trauma awareness as well as personal/societal situations that have caused trauma and how to move forward.
   

This course is being offered for training and for academic credit. The syllabus details the number of credits hours and associated course requirements.

Syllabus 

Lucy Steinitz 

How can we help children and young adults – and even ourselves – who have experienced violence and fear in their daily lives? One answer that is both engaging and effective is to become trained in the Singing to the Lions workshop program, developed in Zimbabwe and adapted and implemented across four continents, including North America.

Singing to the Lions is based on principles of psychosocial resilience, cognitive psychology, and narrative therapy, but geared for paraprofessionals for implementation in schools, shelters, churches, refugee centers, and other community settings. In this course, we will learn the underlying philosophy, approach, and content of Singing to the Lions by experiencing the activities – the games, discussions, simple artwork and exercises – ourselves. With the guidance of Singing to the Lion’s co-author and master facilitator (who teaches this course), participants will co-lead the workshop and discuss how it can be adapted to different cultural settings. (Singing to the Lions has already been adapted and translated into French and Spanish, with Arabic and Hindi in process.) Evaluation guidelines and support-materials are included. We promise learning, insight, and fun - no prior experience necessary.

 For more information, see: Singing to the Lions.

Syllabus

The framework for Building Resilience for Challenging Systemic Racism is grounded in Restorative Justice theory, values, and praxis. This three day course examines the demography of school discipline along with the impact of school suspensions on incarceration rates. BRCSR also examines culturally responsive mindfulness programs for school and community environments. BRCSR incorporates healing and peacemaking circle processes, which encourage participants to unpack historical harms and address root causes of racial injustice. This course empowers participants to fully engage in open and honest dialogue, (truth telling), about structural racism and oppression in the United States, that permeates social policies and is embedded in the American educational system. Participants will help construct a safe and brave space, where they can tap into their creative-self and collective wisdom, through drumming, dance, drama, and dialogue. As practitioners involved in restorative justice and peacebuilding, we will explore culturally responsive approaches for building resilience to systemic and traumagenic effects of racism.

Syllabus