Inside a classroom at the high school in East Baltimore, the boys relish taunting and terrorizing their teacher.
They curse at her. They call her names. They threaten her.
One hits her in the head with a book. She wants them kicked out.
Instead, she agrees to meet with the students and their parents to seek common ground ? and, most importantly, prevent another attack.
“I?ve never been so disrespected by young people,” the teacher tells the parents.
The boys promise to no longer hurt the teacher, and she agrees to let them back in her classroom.
In education-speak, it?s called conflict resolution, and more than 6,000 students and the people they?ve hurt have participated in these meetings in Baltimore over the past decade.
They?ve helped settle disputes at more than 100 city schools and are organized through the Community Conferencing Center, founded by Lauren Abramson, a biopsychologist.
All those touched by the violence ? the victims, their attackers, students, teachers, parents, principals and residents ? sit in a circle and share how the fighting destroys their lives.
Most of these meetings yield a written agreement, and 95 percent of the participants comply, says Abramson, the center?s director.
“The idea is, if people can work out a solution for themselves, they are more likely to follow through,” she says.
These mediation meetings helped a group of girls from Patterson High, settle their beefs this schoolyear, says Nel Andrews, the center?s program director. The girls vented about their problems with each other, reached a truce and stopped brawling.
Abramson got the idea from Australians, who take their inspiration from the native people of New Zealand. The Maori resolve conflicts by having their entire community agree on a solution rather than just punishing the offender.
Baltimore is the only large American city that uses this method to settle classroom disputes.
City schools chief Andres Alonso says he and his staff are considering expanding these mediations next school year as a way to quash disagreements before they escalate into violence.
“Kids deal with conflicts in Jerry Springer mode; that?s all they?ve been taught,” Abramson says. “But young people are hungry to be heard.”
Letting students ?decompress?
Some researchers dispute the efficacy of anti-violence programs in Maryland and elsewhere and point to the continuing youth violence as proof they don?t work.
A lack of evidence exists on whether these programs produce long-term changes in violent behavior, but they remain popular because they provide political cover for politicians, bureaucrats and school officials, says Daniel Webster, a Johns Hopkins researcher.
Often, schools don?t measure the effectiveness of these feel-good programs, relying instead on testimonials.
“Almost any program will work ? and there are thousands of them,” says Stuart Twemlow, professor of psychiatry at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston and author of the forthcoming book “Why School Anti-Bullying Programs Don?t Work.”
“But unless the school is willing to buy into it, God himself could not make it work.”
Still, principals tout anecdotal evidence about anti-violence programs helping individual students and decreasing fights in schools.
The most successful anti-violence efforts, experts say, flow from strong bonds between students and teachers who know the urban pathologies surrounding their schools: violence, poverty, drugs, teen pregnancy, rampant unemployment, generations on welfare and high school dropouts outnumbering graduates.
Teachers need to ask students at the beginning of class about kids? home lives, about what?s happening to them outside the walls of the school, says Philip Leaf, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for the Prevention of Youth Violence.
“When students come in, you have to have discussions about their lives,” he says. “It gives students the ability to decompress.”
?I call them my sons and my daughters?
Not so long ago, Robert Struill would play hooky from Reginald F. Lewis High and run afoul of school police on the lookout for truants. When he would show up for school, he?d go to only a few classes before getting fed up.
“You can?t pay attention when students are cussing teachers out,” the 16-year-old says.
Torn apart by watching Robert waste his life and squander his potential, a cousin delivered an ultimatum: Get in touch with Tyrone Sherrod, or we?re not hanging out anymore.
Robert connected with Sherrod, a New York City principal who moved to Baltimore to help youth mixed up with drugs, gangs and other street temptations graduate from high school.
Sherrod chose to run his program at Lewis High, where a third of students are in foster care, are in group homes or live with grandparents.
To many of his 35 young charges, he?s surrogate father, wise uncle, mentor, friend, confidant, counselor.
Sherrod holds small classes every day, including Saturdays, for overage students who are behind in credits.
He helps kids get jobs at grocery stores so they aren?t tempted to deal drugs or join gangs.
Knowing so many struggle to even come to school, Sherrod lets them have modified schedules, starting classes later and ending the school day earlier so they can go to work.
And he cuts their hair, buys them clothes for job interviews, helps them with their resumes and takes them on college visits.
He launched the program, called Life in a Leaf, in December 2007, and now his kids are on track to graduate. Some are even on the honor roll.
“Some call me Pops,” Sherrod says. “I call them my sons and my daughters. I will always deal with them from a fatherly perspective.”
Robert boosted his D?s and F?s to A?s and B?s.
“I?m gonna stick with Mr. Sherrod,” he says, “because he stuck with me.”
?I refuse to die at age 20?
Nobody hesitates when Lydia Hall poses the question.
“How many of you have seen someone shot?”
Among 20 students, almost every hand goes up in the classroom at Heritage High School in Northeast Baltimore?s Clifton Park neighborhood.
“How many of you have seen someone beat to death?”
Again, nearly every hand goes up.
In Street Soldiers, a new class that started this year at Heritage, students vent about violence on the streets and talk of their struggles to avoid it.
On the wall hang two black-and-white posters depicting two decidedly different world views.
“Thou shalt not snitch,” reads the first of the “Commandments of the Hood.”
Hall asks the students to recite some of the “Rules for Living” written on a second poster.
“A friend will never lead you into danger,” they say. “You can never kill an enemy.”
The teenagers talk out their disputes with friends and rivals before undergoing training on how to settle conflicts for other classmates through peer mediation.
At Heritage, kids don?t call it conflict resolution; they say they?re “doing a street soldier.”
Guest speakers include a gang member and a mother whose son was almost killed.
“Street soldiers, what do you want to be?” Hall asks.
“Alive and free!” students yell.
Since the class started this school year, fewer fights have broken out at Heritage, says Principal Karen Lawrence says.
“The key to getting rid of violence is to understand what they went through the night before,” says Hall, who often puts a reassuring hand on her students? shoulders and heads.
So far, Heritage and Doris M. Johnson high schools, both housed in the Lake Clifton complex, are the only two city schools with the program, which exists worldwide.
Brian Tibbs Jr., a sophomore at Heritage, says he?s more mature because of Street Soldiers.
“I can see both sides of the fence,” he says of disagreements.
He also says he?ll never become a statistic.
“I refuse to drop out of high school. I refuse to die at age 20.”
