Making Allies, Making Friends: A Curriculum for Making the Peace in Middle School
Making Allies, Making Friends is a flexible, multi-track curriculum design which includes over 30 innovative, creative classroom sessions designed to prepare young people to build a healthy multi-cultural community and prevent violence. They address issues of race, class, gender and sexual identity that middle-schoolers face and can be adapted to the needs of many different school environments.
This can be a valuable resource for middle-school districts; schools and personnel; and teachers of violence prevention, youth development, conflict resolution, social studies, art, culture and theater. The material is specifically designed with middle schoolers, 6th graders through 9th graders, in mind. Included in each session are: warm-up exercises, theme information, value clarification, and an experience or activity. Elements of art and culture form a significant part of the activities, which include journal writing, role-plays, murals, story-telling, dramatic monologues and more.
The material can be integrated with the Making The Peace program but can also stand alone. The curriculum design is flexible and consists of a set of foundation sessions and four tracks of elective follow-up sessions. The sessions are suitable for any age or grade level in middle school and enable students to explore their own experiences through understanding their involvement in larger communities and to eventually take action toward building alliances in their own groups.
