Create a Peace Treaty

What You Need:

• Peace Treaty worksheet

What You Do:

1. Ask if students have ever heard the term, “peace treaty” before. As a class, define what a peace treaty is. If needed offer this definition: An agreement to come to peace and end conflict.
2. Share that today your class will be creating a peace treaty together to help manage conflict and support friendship.
3. Introduce the Peace Treaty worksheet and read through it together: 
   •  I,  ……………………….  (first student) agree to:
     • 1. First calm myself and grow peace inside, and wait until emotions are calm to have a discussion with the classmate(s) I feel tension with.
     • 2. Not say or do anything that will grow anger in myself or others.
     • 3. Set up a time with the help of my teacher to meet with the classmate(s) through writing them a peace note (go over what the peace note says in the handout).
     • 4. Look at what I may have done to contribute to the situation before I meet with my classmate(s) and apologize before we meet.
   • I,  ………………………. (second student) agree to:
     • 1.  Respect my classmate’s feelings.
     • 2. Understand that even if I didn’t mean to hurt my classmate, my actions may still have hurt them.
     • 3. Wait until we both have calmed down so we can talk about what happened.
     • 4. Write a note back to my classmate to let them know I will meet with them.
     • 5. Reflect on how I hurt my classmate and what I can do to make things right.
4. Have students make any changes they feel necessary to the peace treaty.
5. Write out the treaty on chart paper and have each student sign the peace treaty.

Meena Srinivasan, MA, National Board Certified Teacher, is a leader in the fields of Mindful Awareness Practices (MAP) and Social and Emotional Learning (SEL). She is the author of Teach, Breathe, Learn: Mindfulness In and Out of the Classroom (Parallax Press, 2014) and SEL Everyday: Integrating Social and Emotional Learning With Instruction in Secondary Classrooms (Norton, 2019).