Charity Leader Helps Disparate Groups Resolve Conflicts Through Talking

By Mary E. Medland

It is a few minutes before 7 a.m. on a Thursday, and Lauren Abramson, executive director of the Community Conferencing Center, is already on her cellphone chatting with a staff member while meandering back and forth between her living room and front porch. Her home is in a placid middle-class neighborhood that is vastly different from those of the Baltimore schools she will visit this day.

She is eager for her colleague, Nel Andrews, to arrive. When she does, the duo will head off to present a violence-prevention workshop for public-school teachers. They have their work cut out for them: On average, just under 100 Baltimore students each month are arrested for incidents that occur on school grounds, according to the Baltimore City School Police, and on average more than 150 city students each month are involved in heated conflicts with one another that require intervention by adults.

But the problem goes beyond the school system: In 2001, the most recent year for which statistics are available, 10,577 city children age 10 or older, or about one out of seven of the city’s youngsters, were arrested, according to Advocates for Children and Youth, a Baltimore nonprofit group.

As head of the Community Conferencing Center, Ms. Abramson has gone into schools, neighborhoods, courts, community organizations, and the juvenile-justice system to, as she puts it, “get people to do the radical thing of sitting down and talking to each other.” The group, which operates on an annual budget of $320,000, has sponsored more than 500 such conferences, she adds.

Money Struggles

Although Ms. Abramson, 45, began getting disparate groups together to work out their differences in 1995, she could only do that when she had spare time from her job as an assistant professor of child psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Three years later, she turned to the work full-time after her group received grants from the Baltimore Community Foundation, the Morris Goldseker Foundation of Maryland, the Open Society Institute, and the Maryland Mediation and Conflict Resolution Office.

These days, the group’s financial future is shaky: A promised $750,000 state contract, to divert more than 500 young offenders from the juvenile-justice system and involve their families and their victims in their efforts to make restitution, has failed to materialize. Only a pair of emergency awards — $130,000 from the state judiciary and $100,000 from its juvenile-services department — prevented the center from closing in the spring. As the group looks to the future, it is hoping to diversify its sources of income, relying not only on government funds but also on fees for services, foundation grants, and gifts from individuals.

The center has made a difference in a troubled city, says Cheryl Casciani, director of programs at the Baltimore Community Foundation. After the center holds a community conference, she says, the number of police calls to that neighborhood declines — and the cost of holding a conference is cheaper than letting conflicts play themselves out in the judicial system. When one neighborhood held a conference recently, she notes, the number of police calls to the area dropped from 70 in the 12 months before the conference to zero in the four months after it.

“As someone who had done community work in distressed communities, I’ve seen so much tension and pressure, struggling schools and overburdened systems, such as juvenile justice, that little problems can become very big very quickly,” says Ms. Casciani. “Everyone screams and calls the cops, and most likely someone will land in detention. No one sits down and talks about what happened, what was the damage, who was damaged, let’s hear everyone’s version of the incidents, and let’s decide how to resolve this situation, which is what Lauren is doing.”

Defusing Tensions

Ms. Abramson’s professional life began on a distinctly different note from what it has become today. With a Ph.D. in neuroscience and animal behavior from Wayne State University, she had considerable experience working with needy children and families in urban neighborhoods, examining how emotions affect their health.

After continuing her postdoctoral studies at Harvard University, she moved to Baltimore because, as she puts it, “Baltimore has a funk factor that Boston lacks.” While at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, she found her calling while attending a conference in Philadelphia.

“I was talking with some Australian colleagues about conflict resolution, and they told me about the centuries-old tradition of the indigenous Maori,” says Ms. Abramson. “When there is a dispute or when someone is wronged, everyone involved sits in a circle and discusses how to make amends. I knew then that was what I wanted to pursue.”

On this morning, when Ms. Andrews appears about 7:20, the two drive across town to their first stop, Windsor Hills Elementary, where they are scheduled to instruct teachers in a technique called the Daily Rap, which is designed to defuse tensions that can lead to conflict.

Windsor Hills, which sits in a middle-class area but draws many of its students from nearby troubled neighborhoods, is a school that Mayor Martin O’Malley has touted as an academic success story among schools that are in crisis. (The state and city are in a struggle over control of the school system, which is laboring under a staggering deficit.)

The center’s relationship with Windsor Hills stretches back to last year, when Iris Murdock, the school’s assistant principal, called Ms. Abramson for help. A rivalry between several fifth-grade girls had erupted into a feud that looked as though it might turn violent. One of the children’s grandmothers was even threatened by late-night phone calls.

In a matter of three days, Ms. Abramson’s group tracked down the students, parents, guardians, and school staff members, listened to their stories, and arranged for a meeting in which everyone could sort things out.

The resulting 90-minute meeting resolved the situation to everyone’s satisfaction, says Ms. Abramson. All the participants signed an agreement, she says, spelling out the role they would play in keeping the peace.

Such meetings should not be simply an opportunity to “vent,” she says. “Participants come up with a very specific plan as to what can be done to deal with a problem and who will be involved,” she says. In nearly all cases, she says, agreements are reached.

‘Daily Rap’

Ms. Abramson and Ms. Andrews arrive at Windsor Hills at 8 a.m., where they are met by Nikki Glass, another facilitator, ready to show the schools’ teachers how to conduct the Daily Rap.

They all appear at the invitation of the school’s principal, Carmen Holmes. Ms. Holmes, pleased with the center’s success in resolving disputes that spill into the school from the students’ neighborhoods, wants to make more use of its expertise.

Some observers may suggest that adding a daily “rap session” to overworked teachers’ schedules is an unnecessary burden, but Ms. Holmes disagrees. It’s just another tool to help teachers cope with the kids, she says.

“When children have conflicts or problems, the teachers will be forced to deal with them and, yes, that will take away time from teaching,” she says. “We’re not requiring teachers to do this, it’s entirely up to them, but the Daily Rap gives them a forum to learn how to better deal with these problems.”

Ms. Abramson reinforces that idea when she meets with the teachers for training.

“What we’re trying to do through the Daily Rap is to provide a way for children to voluntarily come together before there have been instances of bullying or malicious gossip and before the situation escalates into a knife fight,” she says. “We’re very much trying to get the kids to work through their conflicts in a productive manner so they do not enter the juvenile-justice system. We’re hoping that the Daily Rap will help to stop the school-to-prison pipeline.” She explains how the process works: Students sit in a circle, without a desk or table dividing them. They learn to listen, express empathy, solve problems, and share their feelings. “They actually get to experience these skills,” she says, “rather than just learning about them intellectually.”

Indeed, says Ms. Holmes, when kids are acting out they need help, not punishment. “Teachers are well aware that many of these children have parents who are on drugs or are incarcerated,” she says. “Many children are victims of physical or sexual abuse, are in the foster-care system, or are homeless or living in shelters.”

Ms. Abramson’s next move is to divide the teachers into two groups and pull their chairs into a circle. She acts as the facilitator while the teachers speak of their concerns or frustrations. One teacher complains that she has too many boxes of materials stored in her classroom, another expresses concerns about her elderly parents, whom she is planning to move to Maryland from Connecticut, and a third teacher worries about her younger sister, who is recovering from cancer surgery.

The staff may not be talking about conflicts, but they are certainly telling what is on their minds — and offering advice to their colleagues. “Just giving people a voice without being judgmental is much of the power of what we do,” Ms. Abramson says.

One month after the Community Conferencing Center’s visit to Windsor Hills, many of the teachers have made use of the Daily Rap, reports Ms. Holmes. “The feedback I get from teachers is that they really like the process and they say it is working. Lauren is going to be coming back to evaluate how things are working and see what might be done better.”

A Troubled School

After the training session at Windsor Hills, it’s back to Ms. Abramson’s house, where she grabs leftovers from her refrigerator to take back to the basement-level office several blocks away. Time is limited — it is 11:45 a.m., and she and Ms. Andrews have to be at Harlem Park Middle School for a 1 p.m. workshop.

Harlem Park Middle School sits in a neighborhood that is a far cry from that of Windsor Hills, one characterized by boarded-up houses, poverty, and struggle. The school has been named by state education officials as one of the 16 most dangerous in the city, citing its high rate of violence.

The two women are in for a few surprises. It turns out that teachers were not notified about this afternoon’s visit. Also, the air-conditioning in the library where they are slated to meet is on the blink. The anticipated three-hour presentation of the Daily Rap concept has been cut to just under two hours in a sweltering room.

After the introduction, the teachers take a stab at the Rap, and cut right to what’s bothering them: The state has placed their school on probation as a result of suspensions rising from 4.6 percent in the 2002-3 school year to 4.9 percent the next year. Several teachers voice the opinion that the Baltimore City school administrators — referred to as “North Avenue,” after the street where the school-system headquarters is located — haven’t a clue about what goes on in the schools. “North Avenue never, never, never comes to see what actually happens here,” says one teacher.

Like their counterparts at Windsor Hills, these teachers are not exactly resolving conflicts, but they are paying attention to how the Daily Rap could be used to quell problems early. In fact, one teacher has already been doing a version of this on her own.

“There are times when I know I just have to stop teaching and settle things down or my classroom is going to explode,” she says. “I have to get the students to calm down and talk about their problems.”

Wrapping Up

By 3 p.m., the session breaks up. Ms. Abramson and Ms. Andrews head back to the office, taking a detour for ice cream at the Sylvan Beach Cafe, a nonprofit organization that is run by youngsters who have previously been in juvenile detention. While there, Ms. Abramson and Ms. Andrews discuss the afternoon session.

Not all teachers, Ms. Abramson says, welcome the Daily Rap concept as readily as did those at Harlem Park and Windsor Hills. Some, she notes, “just do not want to have to deal with one more demand on them.”

By 4 p.m., the two are back in the office. While scrolling through her e-mail messages, Ms. Abramson makes a call to a local lawyer she met at a rally the previous evening at the Juvenile Justice Detention Center. The two are trying to press for more services for troubled children, seeking an alternative to jail. She then calls State Del. Bobby Zirkin, who sits on the state House of Delegates’ Judiciary Committee, inviting him to attend a meeting of policymakers that she is organizing at Johns Hopkins. With her free hand, she prints out a Baltimore Sun article about the previous evening’s rally.

At 5 p.m., Ms. Abramson wraps up early. While she frequently has evening meetings to attend, today she is heading out to the sailboat she’s got docked in Baltimore’s Middle River, ready to cast aside the troubles of the school system.

“This has really been a good day,” she says. “We’ve made contact with dozens of people who have a great impact on young people in the city. But right now, I’m out of here. I’m going to enjoy the water and the sun.”