Scott Nishimoto

Winning Cooperation

Youth feel encouraged when you understand and respect their point of view. Express understanding for the youth’s thoughts and feelings. Show empathy without condoning, share a time when you have felt or behaved similarly, share your thoughts and feelings after fully listening to the youth and focus on solutions together. See: positivediscipline.com.

The World Peace Game

TWPG is an elaborative hands-on, youth-driven game/exercise. Founded in 2010, TWPG Foundation is dedicated to sharing the global mission of peace, developing self-awareness, and the life work of teacher John Hunter. It supports development of collaboration and communication skills for resolving and transforming conflicts, and the development of the skills of compromise, all while accommodating …

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Reframing

Use reframing to defuse anger and keep dialogue open and positive. To reframe, take a negative statement and remove the emotionally-charged, damaging, and accusatory words, thus changing the statement to be solution-focused. This also applies to self-talk, in which youth can be taught to replace critical comments with supportive ones. For example, instead of saying …

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Puzzles

Puzzles are a good way to encourage critical thinking with all ages of youth. In order to successfully complete a puzzle, they must work with both individual, disconnected parts, and a picture of the whole. Puzzles also require collaboration if done with a partner. They teach patience and persistence. In addition, puzzles are a great …

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