A different type of summer school: Teaching conflict resolution skills
The charter bus departed from the parking lot a few miles from Stone Mountain at 8:01 a.m. on a recent Friday.
Our destination was Montgomery, Alabama. The Legacy Museum, to be exact.
About two dozen middle school boys were aboard the bus, almost all of them Black. The organizers wanted them to see the exhibits there, which focus on the trans-Atlantic slave trade, the history of slavery and lynching in America and mass incarceration.
I asked one of our education reporters shortly before the school year ended to see if anyone was leading any summer programs that focus on conflict resolution. I wondered what was being done to keep our children safe this summer. A few days after the school year ended, a 16-year-old Atlanta girl and a 15-year-old boy in Cobb County were shot on the same evening. They both died.
In response to my co-worker’s inquiry, DeKalb County school district spokesman Donnie Porter called me about a new program designed to help Black male middle school students make good decisions and embrace their potential. The school district’s police chief, Bradley Gober, and others came up with the idea last fall to create what’s called the Legacy Program. Porter thought because I’m Black, I would have an interesting perspective on the program and asked if I wanted to join the bus trip. I agreed to go.
Schools, increasingly, are doing everything for students, from offering mental health counseling to providing clothes...