High School Student urges lawmakers to support conflict resolution in schools

Paige Hodge admitted to being a little nervous before speaking to the Tennessee Senate Education Committee Wednesday, but the topic was one the Nashville School of the Arts senior feels passionately about.Hodge serves as a youth assembly leader for the Southern Movement Committee, an organization that fights the school to prison pipeline. She told senators that she and hundreds of fellow students she’s worked with all believe conflict resolution needs to be taught in schools.“I have a firsthand look at how the lack of conflict resolution in schools not only hinders education in the environment but relationships,” said Hodge. “It’s hard to learn when you don’t feel safe, seen, or heard. Nonviolent conflict resolutions would prevent harm, foster connections, address issues in a healthy way, and get to the root of our problems.”Conflict resolution is the process of ending a dispute and reaching an agreement that satisfies all parties involved.Senator London Lamar, D-Memphis, asked Hodge to speak on the topic to add support for a bill she’s sponsoring that would use existing resources to establish conflict resolution programs in school districts and public charter schools. The Senate committee will be voting on the proposed legislation next week, but Lamar provided a preview in Wednesday’s meeting.Lamar says the legislation is needed because of the uptick in violent crime among youth and the success conflict resolution programs are seeing.“While we’ve been thinking about youth crime and the cities across the state of Tennessee, we’ve seen an uptake in violent crime among youth,” said Lamar. “I came up with this because I’ve seen conflict resolutions work.”Senator Lamar says in Tennessee 77 percent of high school students and 74 percent of middle school students reported violent juvenile crime and 5 percent of high school students stayed at home at least once a month due to fears of schools related violence.She says Maryland schools experienced a 24 percent reduction in office referrals and a 44 percent reduction in suspensions after implementing conflict resolution programs in schools there.Senator Raumesh Akbari, D-Memphis, was among the committee members who expressed support for the bill.Akbari was part of a conflict resolution team when she was in high school and says it works.“I think it really does give you the tools you need to cope and be a functional adult. To understand that you can talk through things as opposed to resorting to violence and we know that a lot of the crime that is committed, they are people who know each other and they just simply don’t have those coping skills,” said Akbari.