Practitioner’s Corner

The Vacation House Dilemma: What Will You Pass on to the Next Generation?

When you think about the next generations– your children, children’s children, and what you want to pass on to them, what comes to mind? It’s a cocktail of things – wonderful memories, wealth, access to opportunities, close rapport with siblings, and an appreciation of the relationships and communities that have come to shape them. We all hope to get to the point where we think about those next generations and can be proactive in helping them.

How are

Changing the Interaction Between Baltimore Police and City Residents – A Call for Funding and Expansion of Unarmed Civilian Peacekeepers

Whatever your perspective on the unrest in Baltimore and whatever you believe the root causes are, most can agree that something went wrong in the interaction between students and police last Monday. Here at Baltimore Mediation, we intensely focus on the interaction between people in conflict. We believe that if we can help change the interaction, fostering quality dialogue, breaking patterns of behavior and reactivity that escalate conflict, then people can cooperate to create lasting change. It involves using power

A Call for Relational Leadership in Baltimore

The unrest in Baltimore is a case study of conflict and inspires many passionate perspectives. As professionals in the field of conflict transformation for over 21 years, we want to understand what others in the field are saying about the riots. In an email earlier this week, a local educator stated their distress about the “lack of credible, local voices to serve as advocates for unrelenting constructive protest.”

We want to look harder at the idea that what we

Conflict Transformation: Skills & Method Explanation – Mapping Conflict

Dusty Rhoades Baltimore Mediation, Community Mediation Centers of St. Mary’s & Calvert County An excerpt from the Institute for the Study of Conflict Transformation, Inc.’s Blog

My wife and I started using movie and TV clips in mediation training after participating in a workshop facilitated by Baruch Bush and Joe Folger called Rethinking Conflict in 2008. We were so inspired by this teaching and learning tool that we picked up the ball and ran with it.

We show a clip from a

Don’t Stand Up to a Bully, Sit Down with Them – Transformative Mediation Works to Address Bullying

On November 22, 2013, Louise Phipps Senft spoke at the Ray Rice Anti-Bullying Links of Kindness Conference held at the SECU Arena at Towson University. The event, organized by Ray Rice, Pro-Bowl running back of the Baltimore Ravens, drew a crowd of 5,000 parents, teachers and students to seek solutions to bullying and recognize the efforts in Maryland to stop cyber-bullying in particular through Grace's Law. Louise brought her unique perspective to the conversation. Below is the text of her speech.