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Books 
Discovery Time 
for Cooperation and Conflict Resolution
Includes Activities on Bias Awareness
and the Expressive Arts
Ages: Kindergarten through Grade 8
Teachers and guidance counselors will find a year’s worth of activities that will:
- Teach social skills through language arts and social studies curriculum
- Integrate the expressive arts into the social curriculum
- Build a caring classroom community
How to order:
Send $20 plus $4 postage to
Sarah Pirtle,
Discovery Center for Peacebuilding
63 Main Street, Shelburne Falls, MA 01370
Email Sarah:
“This is a treasure trove of tried and true classroom activities to educate the hearts of elementary age children. This inspired collection reflects Sarah Pirtle’s artistry as a teacher, trainer, and songwriter who imparts a clear vision of what is possible.”
– Barbara Porro, author of Talk It Out
“Good news! Learn how to transform conflict into a creative classroom discovery process. These beautifully and clearly described activities can be incorporated into the day-to-day curriculum of any school. Discovery Time is a most welcome addition to the fine publications arising out of the Children’s Creative Response to Conflict network.”
– Dr. Elise Boulding, Professor Emeritus, Dartmouth College
Published by the Creative Response to Conflict Program in Nyack, NY.
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Linking Up!
Using Music, Movement, and Language Arts
to Promote Caring, Cooperation and
Communication
Ages: PreK through Grade 3
Educators for Social Responsibility asked me to share what I've done
in early childhood classrooms for 25 years. The result is chockfull of
easy-to-use suggestions to help build social and emotional competence.
"Early childhood teachers preserve endangered human values and
abilities: cooperation, mutual regard and respect for diversity. It is
to this important work that this book and these songs are
dedicated."
Order From: Educators for
Social Responsibility
300 page book plus CD recording with 46 songs for $35 Includes 20
songs that are bilingual in Spanish. The recording is enhanced by the
beautiful harmonies and piano playing of Roberto Díaz and a community
chorus of children.
"Sharing these lively wonderful songs and clear methods of
communication with children will have a profound affect on classrooms
and families. This is a complete teacher training course on conflict
resolution and bias prevention."
— Mara Sapon-Shevin, Professor of Education, Syracuse University.
See the Talk It Out section of this
website to find a key song from this book: "Two in the Fight."
Lyrics are sung to a traditional tune, "There were Two in the
Bed" and it models how to talk out a conflict.
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Excerpt from "Linking Up"
Song 17: "Speak Up"
Lyrics:
Speak up when something's not fair.
Speak up and show that
you care.
Speak up when something's not right.
Speak up and follow your
light.
Speak up, we need your voice in this world.
Activity:
How can we help when we see someone else mistreated?
Read
this poem and then role play responses.
Use the song lyrics to introduce
the idea of communicating your concerns.
Poem: "How Can I Speak Up?"
Waiting in line for the bus,
two kids tease her everyday.
Others do nothing and look away.
What can I
do? What can I say?
Description of Linking Up:
Sarah Pirtle has discovered that one of
the most effective methods of teaching positive social skills in the
early childhood years is through music and movement because children
have an opportunity to practice skills while feeling supported and
guided. Linking Up! offers time-tested songs which are effective
teaching tools in early childhood classrooms.
- Find activities that model how to set clear personal boundaries
and give practice at responding to the messages of friends.
- Learn four dozen song games that build connection among members of
a caring community.
- Hear songs that provide a chance to explore differences and
advocate for fairness, inclusiveness, and mutual respect.
- Find songs that encourage constructive methods for solving
problems.
- Learn how to make a classroom wall chart with photographs of
children from the class as they demonstrate the stages of talking
out a conflict.
The 46 songs include: "Buenos Días al Cielo"
"The
Colors of Earth" which can be found in the Lyrics section of this
website.
Sample songs:
- "My Space / Mi Espacio." Children move within
their own space bubble, singing, "there's no better place in the
world for me."
- "Shake, shake, freeze." Children alternate
moving and pausing while they sit, then stand, then walk together with
awareness of others.
- "When I Say Stop, I Mean Stop." Children
learn what words will help send a constructive message.
- "How Can We
Be Friends Again?" asks children to think about what makes a
problem worse or better and add their own words.
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Circle Time
Sing-Along Flip Chart and CD (2005)
Order From: Scholastic
Cost: $24.99
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Excerpt from "Circle Time"
Song 11: "Peanut Butter and
Applesauce"
How can you move through peanut butter?
Lift one foot
and then the other. |
The set includes a sturdy cardboard flip-chart of 25
pages with laminated song lyrics and the CD produced by
A Gentle Wind in
Albany, NY. Twenty-five simple songs build community, establish classroom
routines, and help child feel welcome. Twelve of the songs were written by
Sarah and she co-authored the short teacher guide. Published by
Scholastic.
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Partnership Education in Action
edited by Dierdre Bucciarelli and Sarah
Pirtle
Seven chapters written by Sarah Pirtle.
A companion to Tomorrow's
Children by Riane Eisler, Partnership Way.
Order From: Partnership
Way Books
Cost: $15
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Excerpt from "Partnership Education in Action"
by Sarah Pirtle
CHAPTER SIX — Partnership
Education: A Place to Begin
Activity One: Personal Stories of Partnership
Grade level: 4th-12th
Goals: to develop a personal reference for the meaning of partnership
to gain new insights by hearing other's memories of partnership.
Overview: This is an excellent activity for staff training as well as
with students.
Optional equipment: A basket, a piece of pottery, and stones that can
be held in the palm.
Procedure:
1. Sit in a circle. If you are using stones, provide one for each
person to hold. Participants report that this tactile experience helps
evoke their memories. Point to the basket and the pottery and explain
that objects like these have been made throughout the world for
thousands of years. Pause to discuss this together.
2. Ask, "Think of a memory of a time that you experienced
partnership."
During sharing, use a popcorn approach instead of going around the
circle so that whoever has a memory can speak first. Often, hearing
others' experiences, sparks recall. Make sure everyone has a chance to
talk, but also allow people to pass.
Encourage an expansive definition of partnership. In fact, if a
student says, "I'm not sure that this is really an example of
partnership," encourage them to share it and clarify that what you
are interested in is their personal definition; all examples are
welcome.
Option: Pass a talking object around, such as the basket, for people
to hold while they are speaking.
Example: "My family moved a lot. I remember being new in a
school in second grade. Everyone was waiting in line outside the school
building the first day. Some girls came over to me and said, 'Come on,
join us,' and introduced me to other kids. This made a big difference in
how I felt."
3. Reflect upon what the stories reveal about the meaning of
partnership. You may notice qualities such as feeling trusted, having
creativity encouraged, experiencing freedom, feeling welcomed into the
adult world as well as elements of cooperation and collaboration in the
stories. Rather than trying to apply a narrow standard of what
partnership means, we are trying to study it in all its forms.
4. If you have a basket and a piece of pottery, reflect as well upon
ways people have passed on skills from generation to generation. Ask:
how long ago do you think the first baskets were made? Think about the
partnership that exists between one generation and the next. |
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An Outbreak of Peace
An Outbreak of Peace (New Society Publishers, 1987) received the
Olive Branch Award for the outstanding book of the year on world peace.
The story focuses on the coming-of-age of a thirteen-year-old girl as
she asks her small New England town to declare an outbreak of peace. A
key theme of the book is expanding understanding of peace and unlearning
racism. The main characters are Polish-American, African-American,
Puerto Rican, and Japanese American.
 Readers learn about the Internment Camps during WWII, the bombing of
Hiroshima, and most of all about the complexities of human interactions.
Although it is written as a young adult novel, it has had a strong
impact on adults as well. Studs Terkel said in an hour-long interview:
"This book is a natural for both young people and adults."
Two dozen young people illustrated the book and were involved in
shaping it. Young illustrators were given contracts and were paid for
their work. At our press conference, the young people fielded questions
and took turns accepting a question from a student and then a question
from an adult so that voices from all ages could be heard. When the
award was given in New York City, illustrator Amanda Cohen came up to
the podium with Sarah and they accepted it together on behalf of the
whole group.
"Sarah Pirtle's novel for young readers is an inspiring book
that communicates the message that there is something young people can
do to make a statement about peace on a personal level. It is a
realistic book with believable adult characters whose concerns, whether
they favor or oppose 'an outbreak of peace' are taken seriously. But it
is Sarah Pirtle's sensitivity to young people and their feelings that
simply shines through."
— from the citation for the Olive Branch
Award
"Than you for being brave enough and centered enough to write An
Outbreak of Peace. My opinion? Incredible! I can't believe you did it
– I
can't believe it could be done. And, you remembered what it was like to
be fourteen."
— Anne Williamson, Forbes Library, Northampton
An Outbreak of Peace is currently out of print. You may be able to
locate copies through searches on the web.
Please contact me if you can suggest a publishing house that might be
interested in reprinting. Also let me know if you'd like to be informed
when the book goes back into print.
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