Our Peace program was started as the result of a Disco Party for Peace that was the dream of 8 year old, Sam. In 2007, Sam had his Disco Party and raised over $15,000.00 for children affected by war in Iraq, Sudan and Liberia, and to provide peace education materials for his own school, Bryant Montessori. A Peace Committee was formed in 2008 and students, parents and staff worked together to create a peace program at Bryant.
We kick off each year by rededicating ourselves as an International Peace Site at an assembly the peace committee creates for the International Day of Peace on September 21st. As a Peace Site we commit to the following:
Protect the environment;
Promote intercultural understanding and
Celebrate diversity;
Seek peace within ourselves and others;
Reach out in service, and
Be responsible citizens of the world.
At the assembly, each child creates a written or drawn expression of their commitment to be a peaceful citizen, and each classroom creates a peace pledge, which every child in the classroom signs and then 1 or 2 students present their classrooms pledge to the school at the assembly. Afterwards, the pledge is installed in their classroom. This has been a great way to begin our year and to clearly set our intention and rededicate ourselves as an International Peace Site.
Each year our students choose a focus topic and a continent which we then introduce at the Peace Assembly. We create our program around that focus and implement the focus topic on a personal, school-wide, community and global level. One of our goals is to choose a topic that our students may take for granted, like education and then create the opportunities to learn about the privilege and gift it really is and how the topic relates to peace.
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