The TREE Blog: Ripples of Knowledge
How to Manage Miscommunication: Intent/Action/Effect
“I’m sure he knew what I meant.” “She knows I was kidding!” Sometimes, even when we have the best intentions, our words and actions hurt people. Maybe someone says something and it feels like a backhanded compliment. Or you respond with a sarcastic comment that leaves a sting. You can
Celebrating Five Years of Peacemaking
In 2016, our small team of peace practitioners, educators and facilitators joined together to envision and plant new seeds of peace education for youth in Ontario. Over the past five years, our team has grown to include 42 facilitators and volunteers who have empowered 6,145 youth to build the peacemaking
Managing Polarized Positions with Children and Youth
Have you ever been in conflict with someone where it seems like there is no solution because your views on a topic are so opposite? Have you ever felt like you couldn’t even enter into conversation about a topic because you felt you had no common ground? In these situations,
Books to Build Your Conflict Toolkit
I love conflict.* *I love what healthy conflict can teach us about ourselves and the people around us, but even with years of training and experience, I still get anxious during tough conversations. So naturally, it comes up often in conversation with my friends and family. When they ask me,
Gottman’s 4 Horsemen, and What We Can Try Instead
When having conflict conversations, it can be easy to engage in behaviours that aren’t actually helpful to the situation. I know it happens to me sometimes, and it can happen in any relationship. Therapist Dr. John Gottman identified four behaviours, which he called the “Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse,” that
3 Peaceful Ways for Educators to Rest this Summer
I smiled and waved at the screen, thanked the class for their great participation and wished them well for the rest of their quadmester. There were seconds of silence, the “bloop-bloop” MS Teams log-out sound, and an anticlimactic rising in me. “Thud,” is the sound that would come after closing
