 You can do that until they can actually have a chance to participate as we are doing right now. And I want also first to thank all the sponsors and supporters of this conference. And obviously this four day event, this is now the sixth year of this event, would not be without the wonderful support of sponsors and supporters, as well as Steve and Lucy. Very much, oh, a lot of data thanks to both of you. But also tonight to DIF, International Education, and TESS, TES, as well as the Global Campaign for Education and higher USA, both of whom have been sponsoring organizations for the Global Education Conference for many years, as well as the oldest organization. And as you can see from the other organizations just below, all of these organizations are working so that this event is successful and can be brought to as many educators, students, and others as possible during the year, during this time, and then throughout the year. And for those of you who also know the routine, we will now turn on the edit function. Yes, I can see all of you. Some of you already know the routine. As you can see the little icons, the next to the map, there's one that's a star. And so if you click on that star and then click on where you are in the world, you can see how global this evening is and this event is. We obviously have a lot of participation in the United States and Canada, but also as you can see tonight, we have Australia. Somewhere in the Pacific, I'm not sure where that is. And Korea perhaps, and Megan says she can't hear. Can other people hear? And Guam. That's Guam out there, I see. Can other people hear? All right, Deb. Yes, Steve. Yes, Katelyn. Everybody else can hear. Now, okay, well, if Megan can't hear, then we'll see very shortly how we can do this. I'm going to just write her a note just to see if she can hear. And Megan, turn your microphone on. Make sure it's on because we practiced it in advance, so it should be working okay. And I'll also just turn my microphone off. But I just wanted to, at this point, set the stage for this session. Let me just see. Megan, can you talk now? Hi, Ed. Yes, thank you. Thank you to, let's see, somebody in the chat. I had to reconfigure my audio. I'm not sure what happened. I can hear you now, Ed. Thank you. Fantastic. I'm glad you're on. And so, Megan, thanks so much for being here tonight or this morning. And I'll turn it over to you now. Great. Thank you so much. I'm sorry I missed you speaking, but I will pick it up from here. I want to welcome everyone here. Thank you so much for joining me for this session. I'm really excited to talk to you all. I'm excited to see where everybody was from. We have a great spread of people. I am going to talk a little bit tonight about, hello, in Toronto, about teaching peace. I'm at the Global Peace Building Center at the U.S. Institute of Peace. And we are located in Washington, D.C. I don't know if anyone has been to D.C. and seen our building or been to visit us before. But we are located near the Lincoln Memorial. And we are part of the U.S. government. We were created and founded by Congress in 1984. So I'm going to introduce you a little bit to U.S. IP. And then I'll jump into some of our resources that we have to teach young people about conflict and peace in bringing how you can bring these things into your classrooms and your spaces. So what you're seeing here is a picture of our building. Our mission is to help the U.S. prevent, manage, and resolve international conflicts without violence. That is what we were created by Congress to do. We only work on international conflicts, nothing within the United States. So most of our work is done in four different ways. We say we think, we act, we teach, and train. So the thinking part is we produce a lot of research and analysis into alternatives to violence. So we want to provide the other solutions to conflicts that are happening around the world. And then we want to take what we're learning through the research and analysis and put it into the hands of decision makers. We are having to decide what the United States is going to do in places like Syria or on issues such as violent extremism. But then we also act. So we take what we're learning through the thinking and we turn it into action on the ground in peace-building projects. So we currently run peace-building projects in about two dozen countries. We are headquarters in D.C. but we do have an office in Afghanistan, one in Iraq, and we are opening up an office in Tunis. Our peace-building projects run kind of a variety of programming. So an example could be that we're running police and community dialogues in a number of countries. So this is something that we see kind of reflected in the United States, but it's something that we're doing overseas as well, where there is a lack of trust between the police and community in places that are emerging from conflict. We want to help try to rebuild that trust so that policing can be safe in those communities. So that's kind of one example of the work that we would do. And then we want to teach and train. So we, hey, great, glad you're there, Ed. So we want to take the skills of peace-building and pass them along to people who are living in conflict zones, people who are working there, and as well, the next generation. So this is where we get into some of the peace education with youth. So I'm in our Global Peace-Building Center and we are the Public Education Center at the U.S. Institute of Peace. So we really work to engage the next generation of peace-builders and let them know that these are skills that you can learn now. You don't need to wait until you're an adult to be contributing to peace-building, but you can be doing it right now. We do this in three different ways. We have curriculum. Our core curriculum is the Peace-Building Toolkit for Educators, which I'm going to talk to you more about tonight and give you some examples, walk you through some of the activities. And then we also have a website. So we have a website that's for students and teachers that focuses on conflict and peace. So it's a way to gain additional knowledge and to start exploring some of the skills. And then we also do offer on-site educational programs. So if you ever find yourself in D.C. with a group of students or with a group of teachers or by yourself and would like to come visit the institute, please let me know because we could organize something for you while you're there. So that's sort of our approach to teaching young people or how we go about teaching, working with youth and teachers. I've been at the institute for a while. I started there about 10 years ago. So it's been a long time. I've moved around and I've ended up where my heart really lies, which is in our Peace Education Center. So I'm excited to talk to you a bit more about that today. And that's our questions about the institute. I'm happy to answer some. But otherwise I thought I would jump right into talking a bit more about teaching conflict and peace. So if you have some questions, feel free to talk them in the chat room or raise a hand. We could probably also take it. And I assume we could take it also on the microphone if folks wanted to talk. If you raised your hand maybe. Otherwise we'll have time at the end. I'll try to save some time for us to ask some questions so you can ask them then too. But feel free to toss questions out along the way. And I'll keep my eyes peeled. So I'm going to jump right into our work then and how we teach about conflict and peace. So I thought I would introduce you to the Peace Building Toolkit for Educators, which you see here. A link at the bottom of the slide. If you wanted to go look at it now, you're welcome to just pull it up on the internet. And you can access our toolkit, which is our core curriculum. You can download the entire thing for free as a PDF. And what it is is a set of lesson plans. These lesson plans are really meant to be flexible. They're built off of the training that we've been doing with adults through our academy at the institute for years. They were developed by teachers and for teachers. So they are meant to be used in the classroom setting. There is a middle high school version here, which you can see the high school is the green, the middle is the blue. And the same theme and content is just introduced a little bit differently for each age group. So what you see here are the themes that you can find in our toolkit. And this tells you a bit about how we approach thinking about conflict and peace at the institute. So the first theme is that conflict is an inherent part of the human condition. This is an important theme at the institute in that we are not trying to rid the world of conflict. What we're trying to do is help people learn how to manage conflict. So if we can get a better understanding about how conflict is a natural part of our lives, we will always have conflict. But conflict can be both negative and positive. So it's negative when it's destructive and violent. It's positive when it's an opportunity for change. So conflict will always have conflict. But instead what we want to do is to try to prepare people to manage the conflict so it doesn't become violent, which is the second theme here, that violent conflict can be prevented. And in here are all the skills of peace building, which I'll show you and we'll talk about. And then it ends on a theme that there are many ways to be a peace builder. If you can prevent violent conflict, you can learn these skills. So now as a young person, what can you do about it? What kinds of actions and activities can you engage in that will help build peace? So that's how the toolkit is structured. There are sets of lessons under each of those themes. And these themes are the ones that we really want to leave students with. We want them to, if they're coming for a program at the institute, this is what they need to leave having understood. And I see a question on the side here. When these curricular are implemented, are they embedded in core subjects or are they taught as discrete? That's a great question. It can be either. So for example, I know a teacher who takes the conflict analysis lesson from our toolkit. There's a lesson in here to teach students about how to understand conflict, how to recognize it when they see it, and then how to analyze the conflict in order to think about how to manage it. And there's a great handout that is a framework for doing an analysis of conflict. So I know a teacher who teaches genocide and human behavior course, which is, I believe, an ID program. And she uses that handout to analyze genocide. And she looks at the Holocaust. She looks at the Rwandan genocide. And she's able to use this conflict analysis lesson to provide sort of a piece lens through which to see the genocide. And I know other teachers who are able to sort of pick and pull from the different lesson plans to incorporate into their core subjects. So for example, another teacher that I'm working with is doing something pretty interesting this year. He's teaching US history and he is having his students role play being loyalists and patriots. But instead of, as in the past, he would always have them do a debate. This year he's going to have them involved in a mediation. So they're going to role play mediation between loyalists and patriots. And he's using our active listening and our mediation lessons in order to prepare students for this. So it's a way to sort of embed it in some of the core subjects. But I also know teachers who have an hour a week that they can do for an elective or they have advisory periods. And so they work their way through it because they have the chance. So there are lots of ways you can try to use it, incorporate them into what you're teaching. So I hope that answered your question, Marie. So that's a bit about how the tool gets structured. I wanted to speak a little bit about some guidelines for teaching peace building. And these are in the toolkit, but they're worth mentioning because they integrate throughout all the lessons. And they sort of provide us with a great guide as we're going about teaching the conflicts in peace. So I haven't included them all here. I sort of selected a few. The first is bridging the local and the global. But whenever we're teaching about global issues, current issues of conflict, we also always want to sort of think about what it looks like in our own lives as well as what it looks like globally. So each of the lessons in the toolkit takes it to a very personal level. So if you're learning mediation, for example, then you're being taught what mediation skills and you're being challenged to think about what mediation looks like in your own life. Where do you mediate? Because we're always mediating conflict between our family, with our friends. But then you're challenged to think about it a little more broadly. So then what does mediation look like globally? Maybe it's the international scale. It's the skills that you're learning to mediate conflict in your own lives are very similar to the skills that Secretary Kerry needs to mediate conflict in the Middle East. So that we can kind of start to bridge the local and the global. And to answer this question of why should this matter to me? Why should I care? So that's something that we always try to do is take what's happening globally in Brentholm and vice versa. And this also might play out in terms of looking at action. So if we're thinking about refugees, for example, thinking about who are the refugees in our own communities? Who are the people? Who are the recent immigrants? There are ways that we can kind of try to connect what's happening globally with what's happening in our own backyard. So the next guideline is emphasizing multiple perspectives. When we're teaching global peace building, perspectives of course are valuable to have. They might lead to some conflict. So it's really important to help people understand why perspectives are... Help young people understand why multiple perspectives are useful and what you can learn from them. But also how do they manage the conflict that might arise with it? So then we're going to get into some skills that will help them manage these conflicts when you hear from somebody who doesn't fairly agree with you. But then thinking about the value that comes with that. So I wanted to kind of show you one activity. So since we're all doing this online, it's a little funny. I'm going to just talk you through it. One activity that we use... This is not in our toolkits, but it's on our website to kind of immediately and quickly get at this idea of perspectives. So we do an activity called paper folding. Pretty straightforward. The students you see in the top photo are doing this activity in our classroom at the institute. And what we do is we ask students to stand up and close their eyes and they have a piece of paper in their hands. And then they're asked to follow a set of instructions and told that they don't need any other details besides the instructions they're being given. And the instructions are fold your paper in half, tear off the bottom right-hand corner of the paper, fold the paper in half again, tear off the lower left-hand corner. So they're pretty straightforward. Then we ask students to open up their paper and hold it over their heads. So what you see in these bottom pictures are three different papers that emerged from the same set of instructions. And what's great is when kids open their eyes, they look around, and adults, anybody who's doing this, if you look around, the first thing you get is some laughter because everybody realizes that everybody else's paper looks completely different, even though they all heard the same exact set of instructions. So then you can get into this conversation about what they noticed. So what did you notice looking around? How did you feel when you saw what your paper looked like in comparison to everyone else's? Did anyone feel like they did it incorrectly? Was there only one right way to do this? And then we can talk about that paper and what it represents. So let's say maybe that it represents your opinion or perspective. So what does this tell you about perspective? And then also you can connect it to thinking about conflict and peace. What does this tell you about conflict? What does it tell you about peace? And when might it be useful to look at something in a different way? So this is just a really great activity to really quickly get at this idea of perspective because it's something where everybody understands we all heard the same thing but we brought different experiences to our understanding of the instructions. So that's one way we kind of quickly introduce this idea of perspectives and why it might be valuable to look at things from multiple perspectives. So one way to kind of get at different perspectives is to teach dialogue skills. So when we're talking about dialogue, we do a lot of debating in school and in life, which is very different than dialogue. They have different goals. In debating, your goal is to prove your point. It's to win. In dialogue, your goal is to improve your own understanding. It's to hear the other perspective. So the process is really different. In dialogue, you're listening to understand. You're using very good active listening skills. In debating, you're listening but to strengthen your own perspective. So they have a very different process. So some of this, if you're teaching dialogue skills, there's a formal process you can teach. There's a great, if anybody's connected to a college, there's a great sustained dialogue. It's called sustained dialogue campuses or something like that. But if you look up sustained dialogue on college campuses, you'll see a great program that actually helps train students in dialogues and they run formal dialogue processes. But you can also just use a dialogic approach. So thinking about how can we listen well to improve our own understanding and hear new perspectives. So it's just a different way of approaching perspectives. And then the last, the second two points here are really tied together. So focusing on individual, translating statistics into people, and sharing real stories. So when we're talking about issues of conflict and peace, it's tempting to talk a lot about statistics, especially when we're thinking of these massive numbers of refugees or thinking about numbers of child soldiers. But when you hear these numbers that are in the millions, it can feel kind of disempowering because you're left thinking there's nothing I can do about it. But when you hear that one story of that one refugee, or you hear that one story about that one child soldier who's returning to his or her home community, then you can start to, first of all, better understand their story, but also think about what you could do to help them. And this is connected to the final point here, which is that you want to leave students feeling empowered. So when we're teaching about conflict, we often use this curve. It's by Sheldon Berman, who's a great educator if you want to look him up. And he talks about the despair empowerment curve. So you'll see that kind of on the starting on the left side, that's where we begin with a basic understanding of a particular problem. But as we learn more about this problem or issue, we start to dip into this pit of despair. So I don't know about you, but that's sort of where I end up reading the newspaper every day. I am in the pit of despair. I've learned a lot. I have a lot of extra information. But I do not feel empowered. I feel completely disempowered. And this is particularly important when we're teaching about conflict issues or problems around the world that we want to see changed. You don't want to leave anybody in the pit of despair. Instead, you want to bring them up into empowerment. So you can see here some steps that it takes, so you deal with the feelings. You get deeply into subject. Let's do a conflict analysis of the issue and see really what's going on. You learn strategies. So what are the skills you need in order to do something about it? And then opportunities. So what are your opportunities now for taking action? So we want to leave students and young people up there in the upper curve of empowerment so that they actually feel like they can make a difference in the issues they're learning about. So that's just something to keep in mind because the topics we deal with can be kind of heavy. So how do we not put it leave anyone in despair but instead leave them feeling empowered. So those are some guidelines that we follow when we're teaching about peace building. But I hope they just give you a sense of some approaches. I'll move on here and I'm happy to answer some questions or take some thoughts if you've got them. But I wanted to give you a couple examples of activities from the toolkit that show you sort of how there are some things you can do to teach about conflict and to teach a bit more about peace. So this activity is from the first theme which is that conflict is an inherent part of the human musician. And it's to explore a bit our own understandings of conflict because we all bring our own backgrounds, our own perspectives on what conflict is. This is my colleague Alison Malowski in the photo. So this is her doing the activity with a group of students. So what we do, what you do in this activity is you ask students for the first words that pop into their minds when you hear the word conflict. So you can see here some of the words that these students shouted out. So argument, war, disagreement, opposing views, fights, discrimination. And then finding solutions. When I do this I often also get weapons, death, anger, sad. There's a lot of words that come up. And then what you do is you ask students to take a look at the words and see if they have anything in common. And what they generally come up with is that they all are pretty negative. And then you can have a conversation then about why do we feel that conflict is generally negative? Can conflict be positive? What would some examples of positive conflict be in our personal level? Do we have an example of positive conflict with a friend? What would that look like? What would that mean? At the national level are there examples of perhaps movements like the civil rights movement that was a positive conflict? What about at the international level are there examples? So you can start to kind of get students thinking a little more broadly, a little more deeply about conflict and have that conversation around conflict as being an inherent part of our life and as being neutral. And then thinking a bit more about when we feel that conflict is negative, how that affects the way we approach conflict in our own lives, but also how that might affect how we approach conflict at the global level when we really feel that it's just negative. So that's a way to get at talking a bit more about conflict and thinking about it a little more neutrally and developing a better understanding of negative and positive conflict. So that's an example of an activity. So the next one is talking a bit more about peace. This is from the same theme and it's an activity to look at different perspectives on peace. So we call it the peace not peace activity, very clever. But essentially what you do, and you can kind of see this in the room, if you look over the heads of the students who are facing us on the far wall, you'll see a little sign that says not peace, if you can see that. And then imagine where you are sitting is another wall and it says peace. So what this is, it's a human continuum, sort of a timeline. And the toolkit has a series of statements. And you ask students to move and stand somewhere along this line between peace and not peace for where they think a particular statement falls. So an example of a statement, a first statement would be, you arrive at home and your mom has taken money off your dresser without asking. This frustrates you, but you don't say anything because you don't want to cause a fight. So students then move and they stand where they think that statement falls. And you'll usually see them sort of all spread out. And then you give them the opportunity to say a bit about why they're standing where they are. And the one thing to keep in mind here is not to go back and forth, they just are listening to what each other has to say. Then you give them another statement. So an example of another statement would be, a high school hires armed security guards to manage school violence. And they move again. And then there's a third group of statements. So an example from this group is, humanitarian aid consisting of medical supplies and fresh water is delivered to a community affected by conflict. And they move and then have a chance to share. So there's probably a few things you noticed about the statement. One is that they all move from the personal to the global, the local to the global. Another thing you might notice is that they're all pretty vague. So there's not a lot of information. So something that comes up a lot is that participants really ask for more details because they're having a hard time making up their mind. But that ends up being part of the point is that you can have then have a conversation around why it's so important to have all the information before deciding where something falls. Is it peace? Is it not peace? For us at the Institute, it's very important because when we are going to do any work in a country, we have to do a very thorough analysis of the conflict that's happening. Because without truly understanding all of the dynamics, we could be making a mistake in doing something that would contribute to the conflict as opposed to contributing to peace. And so you can have that conversation about why conflict analysis is so important and how it can help broaden their perspectives and understanding. And this is a way to really get at this being a dialogue and not a debate. So it's about them listening to each other. Sometimes they'll want to say but or yes, but I disagree on this. So we have to make sure we stop that and really just make it clear that they're there to listen and gather perspectives. And this is a great way for them to start seeing that there's all these different perspectives on peace. And these two activities, these two lessons in the first part of the toolkit are trying to help students think through the gray areas, the gray areas of conflict and peace, so that they really can come up with their own definition of what conflict and peace mean. So we don't want to provide it for them. We want them to come up with the definitions themselves. So these are just a few examples. We also then, I just wanted to show you within the second theme. So when we're teaching about peace, what are the skills that you need to develop? So here are some of the important skills that we try to teach students. So it's conflict styles. What is your style of conflict? Are you an aggressor? Are you an accommodator? In fact, on our website we have a free conflict styles assessment. So I suggest you go and take it. It's helpful to know your own style. And it is actually the only free one out there, I think. But there's also a lesson in the toolkit about it. And this is really helpful because it helps students to think about when that style is useful and when it's not and how they can change their styles. You also get into, as we've talked about, conflict analysis, nonverbal communication, active listening, negotiation, mediation. Then our final theme of how do you take these skills and turn them into a peace builder and use them to be a peace builder? So you start to look at who are the people who are peace builders? What does that mean? What are their characteristics? What are the characteristics you have and what are the ones you would like to work on? Who are the organizations working for peace? What are the ways you could work with them so that you're already joining people who are doing this work? And then it challenges students at the end to create an action plan. They're thinking about how to turn everything they've been learning into action in order to create a change in their communities. So I'm hoping you can hear some things that could fit in with some of the things that you're teaching if you're an educator. You could pick and pull and pull a lesson or an activity and incorporate it. But it also, it could be used as a set because you could work your way through. That's the toolkit. So I wanted to stop there on telling you a bit about this one particular curriculum, which I hope also kind of showed you how we approach teaching about conflict and peace. And I wanted to take a moment and tell you a little bit about sort of what else we've got and then open it up for some questions. So ways to kind of stay engaged going forward. You can see our website in the upper right-hand corner and the link at the bottom. So you can find many additional resources on here. Additional curriculum including lesson plans, activities, multimedia. And then at the upper right-hand corner of that website, you see the virtual passport, which is a great way for students or other young people to explore our website. We have started something new this year called our peace clubs. So this is in response to hearing from students. This is great. We love learning these skills. But what can we do? How can we go about taking this and turning it into action? So we are putting the learning into the hands of students with our peace club starter kit, which is a kit that would help students walk through the steps of starting a peace club. And these could be actually students or it could be any young people who want to gather in their community, they want to gather after school, in school, but to change something in their community that they all care about and to think of that change through the lens of peace. So they're building peace in their community by taking some action. And then at the bottom right-hand corner, something else new for this year for us is we are co-sponsoring an essay contest with the American Foreign Service Association. So if anybody has some students who are US citizens and in high school who like essay contests, this is a great opportunity for them. So I'm going to stop there and see if you have any questions or thoughts or comments. I'd love to hear them. I didn't want to talk at you for an hour. Fantastic, Megan. I see Marie Kodama has a question earlier that she says it seems to me that in order to go through the stages of empowerment, students need to feel that they are in a safe space where they can be vulnerable about their feelings. And how do you establish classroom cultures to get ready for this kind of USIP curriculum? How do you create that safe space sense? And have you noticed differences in how well that curriculum works in different classroom cultures? Thank you. That's great. That's a great question. Yeah, so it is. There's a lot of work that needs to happen to make it a safe space. I think so part of the way that the lessons are all set up to be interactive. So you don't need to bring a lot of previous experience. You kind of come with what you have. And they just encourage a different kind of communication. I do think something that's really important is right up front when you are first with a group of students. And I think probably everybody here does this already. But it's to really create a set of classroom norms. So not just around kind of behavior, classroom behavior, but also around sort of what kind of peaceful culture do we want to have in our classroom. They've actually worked with some teachers who created a peace charter for their class, which I love to that idea. Where they kind of thought about they did an activity saying they thought off by thinking, OK, what does peace mean to us? And then try to create a charter around it that would guide them throughout the year in a way of interacting with each other and their way of interacting in the school. And kind of things that they hoped they would be able to accomplish. And so if you can start the year off by, and if we're talking in the formal school systems, you can start the year off by really engaging students and sort of defining what that culture is going to be for themselves. Then it's a way to kind of start to create that space. And then I think it's just shifting a bit not just what you teach and what students are learning, but sort of how we're going about it. So this gets back to some dialogue. It gets back to how do we find new other perspectives. So, yeah, it's a task to create that space. I did talk to a fifth grade teacher who has worked her way through the whole middle school toolkit with her fifth graders and said that by the end they would really change the dynamics for how they interacted with each other. That they weren't jumping into fights anymore. That they were taking the time to sort of stop and talk to each other about things that irritated them. She actually created sort of, I don't think these are future younger students. I don't know that this will work exactly as well for older students, but she did create a space that was sort of the peace corner. So in students at issues, they had a process for sort of working it out together. So I think there's a lot of tricks that you can use. So that's one idea. I've seen all kinds of questions. This is great. This last one I see here is about elementary. We don't have anything formally for elementary school, but I think you'll find it's a middle school toolkit. Now, if you're early elementary, it may not be as useful, but if you're third to fifth grade, I know teachers who've used it with those ages and have had to do some minor adaptations, but also stay tuned because I am actually working with some teachers to collect those adaptations so that I can kind of put them out there so that you don't have to do that work yourself. So stay tuned and hopefully maybe I can figure out how to get some female addresses and I can let you know as new resources are developed and then you'll start to see some of these elementary school specific resources. But in the meantime, I suggest just taking a look at the middle school and hopefully they'll have some things that you can use. I think that might have been, let's see. Ed, you had a question about real-life situations in students' countries. And then that kind of ties to the end of another question about back to, who's question was this? Marie's question about using another culture. Oh, depending on the classroom culture. That's okay. I've received, let me think here, let's see. Let me just remind myself of the question. Yeah, so I think some ways that we've seen these kinds of skills play out is when you see students engage in perhaps virtual exchanges. We've had a couple of virtual exchanges of connecting classrooms and so you're working with students on sort of their active listening skills, working with them on, as part of that is questions, learning to ask new questions. It's sort of the initial research that they do in order to learn more about the groups they're going to be talking to. So you can kind of see this play out a bit if you're talking about that kind of direct connection between one country and another with students. I think where we end up seeing, I think also we see it sort of on the other end where we've had a chance to work with some students who have been exchange students in the U.S. and spend a year here through different State Department programs and hearing their experiences at the end and what they have, the skills they've needed to develop. A lot of these skills are these conflict management skills and they've tried, had to be something to get to them. And so you can kind of see students learning themselves how to, these skills and putting them into action. I mean, I will say, Ria, I just kind of want to go back to your question and talk a bit about how it depends on how well it works in classroom culture. You're right, you do have to do some groundwork with your students and it works really differently. I think, I do think where students are experiencing a lot of really direct violence themselves, it's going to be a very different conversation than students who are not. And we see that kind of play out sometimes in the students we work with. I think you have to work extra hard at creating that safe space. I think some of the conversations don't work as well when students are directly experiencing violence because it's a different level of, there's a lot of, you have to be aware of a lot of the trauma that they experienced and so it might be some different conversations. So some of this, I think, it will differ a lot from student body to student body. Just said, the toolkit is based on activities that we've done with people from around the world, from countries where we work. And it's being used in, in fact, I just spoke with a young woman who's using it to work with youth in South Sudan and it's found that it fits really nicely into what they're doing. But I think they're using it and pulling it and incorporating it into some other existing curriculum. So it will differ a lot from community to community and group to group. But hopefully it's flexible enough that it provides you with, I think this young woman in South Sudan was saying that what she appreciated is that it's flexible enough to provide them with an entry point and then they can take it and work in different examples that are culturally relevant. So I think it provides a great basis for a conversation and a great understanding of the skills and then you'll want to work in your own culturally relevant examples, whether it's in the role play or it's in case studies. So that'll be something that will differ a lot from place to place. So I hope I've sort of answered some of this question. Were there any other questions that missed, Ed, do you know? I have another one. Often times when schools are connected online globally, there's obviously issues of linguistics and language. And how is the toolkit something that can be used with other language groups? Are there other language versions available? Or how do teachers in other countries with kids speaking other languages use this effectively with our U.S. students? Sure, thank you. Yeah, so it is also in French, Spanish, and Arabic in addition to English. So it's available to be used in those languages. If you have language learners, I think it's relatively easily used in that a lot of it is conversational. So it's a great way to practice. And there can be as little or as much reading, I think, as you want there to be. So because it's mostly conversationally based, it's something that you could use in English language classes with other students who are learning Arabic French or Spanish. We don't have any other languages at the moment, but that's something we're willing to explore. The challenge of two completely different languages, and especially virtually, gosh, I don't have the answer to that. I'm not really sure. I think it's a challenge that we've come across and haven't really figured out how effectively to do virtual exchange between two groups that don't speak the same language. It's really difficult. So I actually would love to learn that, and I hope maybe there's a session during this conference on that. But at least among students who speak the same language, it's something that they could use to kind of learn that new language or practice. Fantastic. And we can take some more questions in the chat session. Or if you would like to raise your hand, you can see the little icon there for raising your hand. And we can give you the microphone as well if you have a question that you would like to ask, Megan. Oh, good. I am so glad. I mean, I'd also love to hear from you just sort of, if you just want to share sort of what you do that's connected to global education and how you think piece of the education fits in there. I'd love to just sort of hear some feedback from you as well. Hear what you're up to. Megan, I assume you saw the note just now from someone who downloaded the middle school PDF and wow, lots of great information. So there's some feedback for you right there. That's great. I'm so glad. I'm glad it looks like beautiful. Great. Thank you. Hey, hey, are you a teacher? Yes. Yes. Great. I'm not sure who that is. I hope it'll be. I hope it'll be. I'm not sure who A is. Oh, good night. I'm happy you gave A the microphone. Thanks for joining me. And Megan, I'm not sure how many people actually know what the U.S. Institute of Peace is. And I'm curious to know how it fits into with the peace tech and other initiatives at the USIP. So how do you fit into the USIP program in general? Oh, thanks. Yeah. So the Global Peace Billing Center is a part of the US Institute of Peace. So we are just the public education center. Great question, Dan. So we are embedded in the Institute. And part of the reason for existence is that the Institute has, as part of its mandate, as part of its founding act, the responsibility of educating the American public about peace building, both in its importance, but also how one can go about it. And so we try to fulfill that part of our mandate by educating the American public, the public more broadly. And so to do so, we try to focus on young people and teachers. We are no longer officially connected to the Peace Tech Lab. So the Peace Tech Lab was a part of the Institute until about a year ago. They were, for anyone who doesn't know, it was a center that focused on how you can use science and technology for peace building. And they have since spun off into their own independence, or I guess they're a nonprofit. And so they are still housed within the Institute physically, but they are officially a separate organization at this point. But they're a great place to go if you're interested in science and technology and peace building. They're great to look at. So I'm seeing a question on, yeah, resources for parents to help their children during times of conflict, such as the incident in Paris. Yeah, thank you. In fact, we were all just talking about this today at work. And we don't have anything that's directly addressing the incident in Paris. I think what it falls under for us ends up being how to have sort of difficult conversations, maybe how to think about, talk about conflict. You can find some resources on how to talk about conflict with young people, how to have those hard conversations. But we don't have anything specifically to Paris or any of the recent events in Beirut over the last week. So nothing that will be either really, if you haven't, I'm sure you've seen them all. There's some great things that are coming out in the newspaper. Some of the posts just published something. I know there are a number of French magazines that have published some things that are being translated. So you can find them online. I just found a bunch of them today for myself. I think the New York Times might have just published something. So there are great resources specifically about the events of last week. We don't have something. It's a simple answer. I can, gosh, if I have a single address, I can try to send you some things too that are directly connected. But otherwise, I would hope that I think that some of our resources help just get a better understanding of conflict. But I think also the other thing that's really important is also to talk about how people are helping. In fact, one of my colleagues just today brought it, mentioned the, gosh, Mr. Rogers, motto, which is sort of focus on the helpers, I believe. I don't know if anyone else has heard this. I had forgotten what he said. But that's something we try to do is we try to tell the other side of the story. So not just the bad headlines, but the good ones. So where do you see people helping? And what are the good things you see? So the stories of the people coming together in Paris, stories of heroism in Beirut, and of communities coming together. And those are stories that are really important to talk about so it doesn't feel hopeless. And so that is something that you can find on USIP's website. Are sort of these stories of hope and the stories of the people who are doing good things who are working for peace in these communities that are affected by conflict. And I think those are part of the conversation so that they don't get lost among the explanations of the conflict, but then also looking at what people are actively doing. Leanna, I'm seeing some comments here. I'm trying to read through it right now. Discussing the difference between keeping peace, making a peace building, definitely. Yeah, it's so important because people get so confused. Yes, these are very important distinctions, everybody. So when we're talking about, you probably all know it, but the peace keeping, peace making, and peace building. So peace keeping are sort of the troops that keep the peace so they're perhaps in the United Nations. They're typically soldiers who are being tasked now with being peacekeepers. And often in the midst of a peace process, they're there to make sure that the violence doesn't break out again. It's sort of that negative peace that we're thinking about peace. We talk about negative and positive peace. And the negative peace is the lack of violence. It's the fact that there's no war or there's physical violence. The positive peace is more of the peace making and peace building, where then you don't just have no violence, but you're also trying to change violence structures. You're trying to change the less obvious violence that's not physical and actively build a peaceful society. So the peace making would be sort of the peace processes that take place. So maybe it's the conflict. We actually talk about conflict management now as opposed to conflict resolution because conflict resolution is sort of a part of conflict management. It's making peace. So you're signing a peace accord, peace agreement. And then peace building are the other things that you're doing. In addition, it's peace building is a huge concept. There's a lot of things that fit into there. Peacekeeping can fit into peace building. So it can be making. But it's sort of the umbrella term. So thank you for that. That's helpful to bring up for everybody. I sort of love it also. And I mean we have I guess five minutes left. I don't know if folks want to stick around for five more minutes. And I'd love to hear about some of the things you're up to. There's something that what you're teaching or doing and maybe ways that you see peace fitting into it, peace building education unless you have any final questions. Yes. And if somebody raises their hand, if you see the little hand icon underneath your name up there above the main room, if you indicate you raise your hand, we can give you the microphone. Let's see. We got something here. Sorry as well. All right, Marie. I'm reading your comments. It probably makes sense to most people that violence should be avoided. In countries like Japan, constitutionally, the country cannot go into war. And it's like direct violence. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. So this question of what happens if peaceful conflict resolution approaches aren't enough if they don't work. So yes. It's a great question. I think where we, what we do is throw, as you say, have a conversation. It's a conversation. So we throw it back to students. And there's a couple levels, right, that you can talk about. So it's, what do you think would happen? You know, is there a time when violence is justified? And that's a great, that can be a conversation to have. In fact, one of my colleagues teaches a course on nonviolent civil resistance. And so he sort of challenges young people and everybody, it's not just a course for young people to think through sort of these different levels of resistance from something like you hang a sign or a poster to you protest and block traffic all the way up to you destroy property and then maybe even you harm yourself. Maybe you set yourself on fire or reaching a point of you, you fight back. So these different levels of thinking through when, what is a level that's appropriate and when would you get there? We don't have an answer. I think if you're a pacifist, you have your own answer of when, what you do if it doesn't work, you just don't use violence. But for those who aren't pacifists, it is a real question. And you can get into a conversation about just war. Is there such a thing as just war? When is it? What is it? Not in a way of addressing answers, but challenging students to really think really deeply about what is the limit? What does it mean? When do you know that all the approaches have been used? And then one might it be acceptable to move beyond something that's nonviolent if it is acceptable. Whether it be war or whether it be something personal, so in your own life. I don't have an answer and I don't think it's an answer. But I think you can see that the students really want to have this conversation because some of them it doesn't seem very real that they're facing. For others it's because it's something that they know their country faces or that they might have to face one day. So these are questions that they really want to have or want to explore the situations they want to have. Yeah, I don't have an answer for you, Marie, in terms of precisely how that conversation goes, but definitely that it's important to have that sometimes it just doesn't work. Ideally you work towards it. If a mediation negotiation is you're trying to make it successful so that you don't have to move to violence, but a lot of it is timing. We talk about in mediation that if someone isn't ready, if the timing isn't right, it's not going to be successful. So there's no point in even trying to get into a mediation if it's not right. If it's not right and ready are sort of the official terms. Because it's not going to be successful. So you do need to sort of know when it's the right time to try on peaceful conflict resolution approaches because they might actually work. That's me talking at you a lot, Marie, about that. Oh, great. I'm so glad to see that about. Joffrey, thank you. I would love to stay in touch as well. And you see Marie's last question. Yeah, I see my last question in two minutes. Marie, I'm so glad you're asking lots of questions. Thank you. I wish we could continue in person. I have some reflections about what specifically. This is a reference to sort of the question about what happens that nonviolent solutions don't work. No, this is like what I read her question is like after you've done all this and students have gone through this, what have been some of their reflections on this process? Yeah. Well, so some of the things that I hear is number one that students are not talking or thinking about conflict or peace. I'm speaking very generally, of course. I often get a response from students that they hadn't thought about conflict as perhaps being something positive. When they think of conflict, they think violence. And so having the opportunity to think about conflict differently and also learn that you could use conflict in order to drive positive change is something helpful. Peace is something that students just don't and young people don't get the chance to talk much about in a very active way. Peace can sometimes seem like a bad word. And so I think it's changing that conversation and helping young people understand that it's an active process with skills that you can learn. Because that's some reflections that we hear. One student said to me as I was leaving, she said, you know, I came into this session thinking that this was going to be that I come from a military family. And I learned we were going to learn about peace. And I thought this was going to be a total waste of my time. But after this workshop, I'm thinking about peace very differently. And I realized it's something that's really active that you can work for and it's not fluffy. And it's something that I can actually get behind and want to take part in. And then it's not against what my family does. It doesn't take away from what my family does. And to me, it's so many kinds of reflections of just getting a better understanding of the role young people can play in creating a more peaceful world. These are reflections that I find particularly meaningful. So that's sort of my quick answer to your question now that we're done with our time. Megan, thanks so much. It is after actually 9 o'clock on the East Coast in the United States. I really appreciate your session. And those who asked that they wanted to connect with you to write blogs and things, the email address is on the screen. And so I assume that they will be in touch with you. Very much appreciate the toolkit and the reflections. Great sessions and great questions. Thanks so much, Megan, for contributing to this Global Education Conference. Thank you, Ed. Thanks for moderating. I really appreciated your help. And thank you, everybody, for joining and for all your wonderful thoughts and questions. If you do email me. I'd love to follow up after this on the phone or by email to get your thoughts and to answer any further questions that perhaps work together. So please do shoot me an email. Thank you all again. I really appreciated you being here. Fantastic. And as I mentioned, the outset, this has all been recorded. I'm going to stop recording now, but the entire session, including the chat, as well as the slideshow and audio will all be recorded as part of the 2015 Global Education Conference. Thank you again for questions and for the presentation, Megan. Thank you. Thanks, Ed.