"Culture of Calm" for troubled students

A new curriculum in some of Chicago's charter schools aims to target outbreaks of violence in the student body. The schools participating in the curriculum are located in areas subject to gang violence and high crime rates. Mansley Career Academy High School in Chicago, profiled in this NPR story, is one of the first to promote the "Culture of Calm" as a way to curb violence and get students on the right track toward graduation and college.

At Mansley, Room 113 is officially the Peace Room, where students undergo mediation training to resolve conflicts between other students and teachers. Educator Ilana Zafran stresses to students that no matter how much anger they feel or what thoughts they have, they can remain in control of their actions. Some of the workshops focus on "de-escalation" and on tracing the roots of the students' anger. As a result, fewer fights and gun violence have erupted at Mansley Career Academy in the past several months, and the future does look brighter. Listen to the details of this school's insightful anti-violence curriculum here:



The rules are simple. If you get angry, just stay calm. In reality, though, this line of behavior does not come easily in some of the situations that students on Chicago's West Side undergo on a daily basis, some of them matters of life or death. Listening in to kids' needs and changing inherent codes of behavior are promising first steps to getting more students out of gun fights and into higher education.