I read this out loud to Beloved, who said, ‘You think we can force OC Transpo to use this to resolve the strike?’

Our school has adopted a program called Kelso’s Choices (Kelso is a frog, comes with a series fo stories and stuff). Basically, it’s a series of choices you teach kids to use when they have a conflict.

They first decide if it is asmall problem (one they can try to solve themselves) or a big problem (one they need to tell and adult about — usually something that involves safety, as in someone is getting hurt).

If it is deemed to be a small problem, they try 2 Kelso’s choices (strategies) to solve it, and if it still isn’t solved, then they tell an adult. The key to this is that the adult (in our case teachers) always ask which 2 choices they tried, and then either help them choose a strategy that will work better (sometimes the one they pick isn’t best for the scenario) or wade in and mediate a settlement (and if they can’t agree on a settlement I usually send them to stand against the wall until they come to an agreement — which usually has them agreeing on ANYTHING pretty quick just so they can play again!)

You can see info about the program, and the 9 Kelso’s strategy choices here:
http://www.kelsoschoice.net/aboutkc.html

Oh, and of course we don’t introduce all the choices at the same time, and for home use you could pick just a few to use.