Projects for a Civil Society offers several different services and programs for schools and organizations working for youth.
- Experiential Workshops – PCS facilitates 3 and 4 day Alternatives to Violence Project and Help Increase the Peace workshops on conflict transformation. We offer these for school or agency staff and for the youth they serve. Schools find these workshops do a tremendous job at creating a strong sense of community and connection, empathy and compassion, and see a substantial drop in classroom problems, fights, and bullying. These workshops quickly create a strong positive culture. Some schools offer these workshops as part of school welcome and orientation to create the culture and community they seek in the first week of school.
- Training – We also train young people and adults to become facilitators and trainers in these programs, to enable organizations to set up their own independent programs.
- Presentations – PCS does visiting presentations outlining the impacts of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) and Trauma on behavior and brain development. These presentations are usually one to two hours long – excellent for brown bag presentation periods.
- Trauma Informed Care Introduction – PCS offers presentations and facilitated dialogs on integrating Trauma Informed Care into school or other institutional settings that offer alternatives to discipline, suspensions and expulsions. The presentation is usually one to two hours. Facilitated dialogs vary depending on the goals of the group.
- Restorative Process Programming and Training – PCS can help your school or agency develop restorative practices for conflict and discipline problems that keep students in the community and avoid suspensions and expulsions.
These elements can be integrated to bring powerful understanding and programming to bear to effect real changes in a school or organization. First doing the presentations on the impacts trauma and neglect on youth behavior and brain development. This is followed by principles of trauma informed care, seeking to treat causes behind misbehavior, rather than punishing their symptoms and discussing how to change procedures and cultures to foster this ethic. Experiential workshops then bring the personal experience, community building and cultural change to bring these to fruition. Lastly training restorative processes sets up new procedures and methods for having the community solve conflicts in ways that preserve the community.
A Glimpse at Help Increase the Peace Youth Workshops
*** PCS’s Experiential Workshops have been approved for Continuing Educations Credits for Teachers, Social Workers, Therapists and other professions. ***
*** Are you associated with a Seattle Public School? *** The Seattle Department of Education and Early Learning has approved PCS as a qualified partner for Social, Emotional, Behavioral, and Family Support. This means School Levy funding is available to bring PCS workshops into Seattle Schools. If you want Help Increase the Peace and Alternatives to Violence Project workshops in your school – contact us.
AVP Youth Workshops Have been done…..
- For juvenile Justice “clients” & in Young Offender Centers
- In school Rooms: part of the curriculum or special class
- For Teen Moms groups
- At Retreats
- For street Gangs & Gang Exit Programs
A PCS schools adventure:
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
In September of 2013, PCS executive director, Roger Kluck, took part in an incredible AVP project. American Paradigm Charter schools wanted every student in two high schools to have AVP training in the first week of school. AVP sent facilitators 70 from across the country to Philadelphia to host 27 simultaneous workshops for 550 students for the first 4 days of school. It was an incredible undertaking! Roger brought back a lot of experience to apply to two school workshops in Seattle the following week.
American Paradigm Schools first tried AVP for its adult staff at the Memphis Academy Middle School. There they trained roughly 70 adults, including the teachers, administrators, librarian, janitors and lunchroom workers. Coupled with other changes in the school Memphis Academy saw the number of serious police calls to the school drop from 138/year to 15. This experience has led American Paradigm Charter Schools to seek AVP training for all their students. See: