Adventist Peace Radio, Episode 52: Teaching Peace to Children

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Welcome to Adventist Peace Radio, the podcast of the Adventist Peace Fellowship. In this episode, Jeff Boyd interviews Charissa Boyd about her experiences teaching peace to children.

Charissa Boyd

Charissa Boyd

Charissa Boyd has a BS in Social Work from Union College and an MA in Curriculum and Instruction from Andrews University. She worked in South Korea for 3 years teaching English and writing language textbooks. She has a wide range of teaching experience in the United States, including three years teaching unaccompanied children, who were primarily from Central America. Charissa has also been a social work case manager for a faith-based nonprofit, where she worked with unaccompanied refugee minors. Currently, Charissa is a work-at-home mom, taking care of and homeschooling our 4-year old son and editing dissertations and books in her few spare moments of silence.

Credit: Charissa Boyd, South Korea, 2003

Credit: Charissa Boyd, South Korea, 2003

SHOW NOTES

Resources:

Living Values Projects:

Two of the Living Values peace unit activities are to make peace cards and to create a peace game. For the peace cards, our son made eight positive cards (e.g., “Arms are for hugging.”) and eight negative cards (e.g., “Hands are not for throwing axes.” Wait, what?!). Then he walked around handing out the cards to people on the sidewalk. The peace board game involved creating activities for each square on the board. Each player rolls dice, moves ahead, and does whatever is listed on the particular square.

The peace board game. Some squares are positive things to do, while others are problems to resolve.

The peace board game. Some squares are positive things to do, while others are problems to resolve.

Our son came up with the peace quotes, and Charissa wrote them down. Here he is delivering them to people on the campus of Andrews University. I received this one as a surprise when exiting the library.

Our son came up with the peace quotes, and Charissa wrote them down. Here he is delivering them to people on the campus of Andrews University. I received this one as a surprise when exiting the library.

Songs:

Peace Books, The Video:

In this video, Charissa describes some of the books she has used relating to peace and war. For links to these books, scroll down below the video.

Peace Books for Preschool:

War Books for Young(ish) Children:

Sources for Children’s Books:

Supplemental Resources:

  • A Peace Reader (Sider & Keefer Jr., eds., 2002)

    • Ch 14, “Teaching Peace to Children Who Play War” (Bicksler)

    • Ch 15, “Ideas for Teaching Peace to Children in the Church” (Weatherford)

  • The Three Little Wolves and the Big Bad Pig (Trivizas & Oxenbury, 1997) [Note: This is a ridiculous little book, but some of you might get a kick out of it.]

CONCLUSION

Thank you for joining us for this episode of Adventist Peace Radio. If you appreciated this conversation about teaching peace to children, we hope you’ll share the episode far and wide.

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DONATIONS: You can support the podcast by making a financial contribution. We invite you to donate online at AdventistPeace.org/donate. If you watched the YouTube video of the final book conversation, you know our production value would increase greatly with better lighting, so if you have an old Aputure 120d sitting around, we gladly accept gifts-in-kind!

MUSIC: Our theme music is “Green Fields” by Scott Holmes, and this is available at the Free Music Archive.

DISCLAIMER: The Adventist Peace Fellowship is an independent 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that supports work for peacemaking and social justice building upon the values of the Seventh-day Adventist tradition. We are not part of, affiliated with, or supported by the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists or any affiliates known as the Seventh-day Adventist Church. Any content, opinions, statements, products or services offered by Adventist Peace Fellowship, are solely those of our organization, and not those of the Seventh-day Adventist Church.