Conflict Resolution & Violence Prevention Project
Overview
The Leadership Program’s Violence Prevention Project (VPP) is a school-based preventive intervention targeted to early and middle adolescents in urban areas. VPP is designed to increase peer support, improve school and community behavior, improve conflict resolution skills, and alter norms about using aggression and violence such that students report a lowered tolerance for violence. VPP takes place in the classroom setting; each classroom receives 12 weekly sessions, led by a trained program facilitator. Each lesson lasts approximately 45 minutes and consists of a warm-up, main activity, and closing using the experiential learning cycle (Pfeiffer & Jones, 1983).
VPP’s curricular framework is theme-based and ensures fidelity to set lessons while allowing for adaptation within core components to meet student and school needs. For middle schools students, the core components are introduction to leadership, self-affirmation, cooperation, vision and imagination, conflict management; for high school students, these include introduction to leadership, self-concept, group dynamics, vision and imagination, conflict management, social responsibility. Each unit concludes with an arts-based group project.
Content
Students are motivated through experiential active learning exercises emphasizing communication, positive socialization and other skills necessary to succeed in school and in life. Our original curriculum is facilitated by our highly trained staff, who adhere to lessons while also taking advantage of "teachable moments," thus adapting to the crucial needs and concerns of students in the moment that they manifest themselves. In addition, all violence prevention lessons include simultaneous modeling for classroom teachers, improving buy-in among all participants and creating consistency in the conflict resolution process. Schools participating in this program receive:- Introductory principal meetings
- Teacher/Trainer planning sessions
- Facilitator-led in-class lessons
- The Leadership Program VPP curriculum and materials
- Evaluations to examine program effects
- Training and technical assistance for high quality implementation
©2012 The Leadership Program, Inc.