Any nation that spends almost $80 billion of its annual budget for defense channeled through the Pentagon and hands out a pittance here and there for social uplift is moving toward its own spiritual doom.

— Martin Luther King Jr.

Cris Williamson will give benefit concert in Modesto

Prior to the coining of the term "Alternative Music," and light-years before women had ample access to the industry, Cris Williamson was a pioneer busy changing the face of popular music. Her music is often called "women’s music," but is genderless. Her fans, of both sexes and all ages, gravitate to her because of powerful visual images her lyrics evoke. A constant throughout Cris’s career has been the merging of the personal and the political. Her lyrics show up on a regular basis in books and thesis papers. Cris's albums are part of the curriculum for women’s studies courses. And thousands of people who may not even know her name have been touched by the music as they join their voices together to sing "Song of the Soul" in church or around a roaring campfire.

On Friday, March 17, 2000, Cris Williamson will perform in Modesto at Johansen High School Auditorium, (641 Norseman Drive, on Claus Rd. between Scenic & Yosemite,) Modesto. Doors open at 7 pm; show starts at 7:30. Suggested donation: $25. Premium reserved tickets are available in blocks of 8 for $500 or 4 for $250.

The concert benefits College Avenue Congregational Church, Modesto. CACC, the valley’s first open and affirming congregation, remains committed to social justice issues and fostering a community that respects all its members.

Tickets available at Espresso Caffe on McHenry or Richard’s Custom Framing, 1323 J St., or by mail from College Ave. Congregational Church, 1341 College Ave., Modesto 95350.

Outstanding Women in Stanislaus County are Named
By MYRTLE OSNER

Each March, the Stanislaus County Commission for Women names ten Outstanding Women in our community. The twenty-first Outstanding Women dinner will be held on March 18th at the SOS Club.

In addition to contemporary women, the Commission also names Outstanding Young Women. This year: Zena Knight, Eric Kramer, Xia Lee, and Nicole Loeffler.

This year there is also The Outstanding Woman of History, Carmela Dutton Barnard.

Stanislaus Connections is proud to announce the Ten Outstanding Women of Stanislaus County:

Mary S. Brown has coordinated clinic protection for several years as a volunteer for People for Choice.

Sharon Burnis is Associate Superintendent for Administrative Services for Modesto City Schools. (Please see article on page 9.)

Denise Costa has been especially active in Girl Scouting and the Salvation Army.

Mary Beth Edwards has been an outstanding teacher throughout her life, especially in kindergarten.

Sharon Froba is best known to readers of this newspaper as the person who organized the "Day of Respect" at Modesto High School.

Mary Alice Onorato is Director of Nursing Skills Lab in Modesto Junior College and serves on the Habitat for Humanity board.

Samantha A. Phillips-Bland, the "Margaret Sanger" of Stanislaus County, has worked in the fight for women’s health and the right to provide young women with sex education and family planning services.

Sue Potter has worked for Stanislaus County Mental Health Department actively addressing issues of families, women and children being negatively affected by substance abuse and mental health problems.

June A. Rogers, a resident of Hughson, is a past Board member of Laura’s House, a transitional home for women in recovery.

Jane Weinheimer of Oakdale sixteen years ago became the first and only Catholic Charities Ombudsman. She has trained over 400 volunteers and has written two workbooks on Elder Abuse: The Circle of Care, and It Shouldn’t Hurt to be Old and Dependent.

Outstanding Living Pioneer: Isabell Warren Hartwich at 88 still takes an active role in management of the dairy ranch. As a member of the National League of American Penwomen, she frequently helps others in their writing and editing. Her dedication to Girl Scouting has inspired hundreds of girls to be independent and leaders in their own communities.

True education is of the heart and of the mind
By TINA ARNOPOLE DRISKILL

"A young person can do well in school and flunk in life."

Linda Lantieri, director of the Resolving Conflict Creatively Program National Center, goes on to say, "...the talk around national standards has not included the social, emotional, and ethical domain. We are beginning to enter that discussion, calling for standards in these areas of young people's development that are as rigorous and comprehensive as the ones for the cognitive and intellectual domains."

It is with the hope of bringing these same standards to Modesto that Sharon Burnis, Pat Logan and Beth Bailey of the Modesto City Schools Pupil Services Department sought out and implemented RCCP into the MCS curriculum. The process began almost three years ago, when Burnis, MCS Associate Superintendent for Administrative and Pupil Services; Logan, MCS Director of Pupil Services; and Bailey, one of five chairpersons of the Safe Schools Project, took part in the Safe Schools Committee initiated as a result of a meeting with MCS Superintendent James C. Enochs and parents of gay students who were being harassed at school.

Enochs recognized the need to ensure the safety of all 33,000 plus students in the district and broaden the discrimination policy, which already covered race, religion and economic status, to include sexual orientation. This immediately raised the concern of the city's religious community, who feared MCS staff and students would be condoning a lifestyle they interpreted to be forbidden by their religion.

"During the first months there was a lot of tension," says Bailey, " and very little communication among committee members. People were talking and not listening." A shift in the process came when Charles C. Haynes, Ph.D., a theologian from the First Amendment Center Freedom Forum of Vanderbilt University, presented an in-service day in Modesto. His message encompassed the belief that, "Rights are best guarded and responsibilities best exercised when each person and group guards for all others those rights they wish guarded for themselves...A society is only as just and free as it is respectful of this right or its smallest minorities and least popular communities."

Following a year and a half of subcommittee meetings in the areas of curriculum development, staff development and student support services, the MCS policy of "Principles of Rights, Responsibilities and Respect to Ensure a Safe School Environment" was approved. "It was remarkable," says Logan, "having everyone from religious groups to gay and lesbian groups ...able to listen to each other without fearing that their agenda was to impose their will on each other."

At the district board meeting to approve the new policy a youth minister was noted to have said in reaction to a newspaper article chronicling a day in the life of a gay student in a Modesto high school, "If any of the students in my ministry participated in what happened to that child, then I have failed, and if any of the students in my ministry witnessed what happened to that child and did not intervene to stop it, then I have failed."

Although the policy was approved, only 13 of the 33 district schools were employing any type of conflict resolution program. Few of these included staff training and none factored in parent education. Synchronistically, Bailey, Logan and Burnis, attended a Department of Education Conference in San Diego around the same time at which Lantieri spoke about RCCP. "We knew right then and there," says Logan, "that it was exactly what we were looking for..."

The three began to pursue the RCCP National Center with requests to become an RCCP site. This was no easy task. Although the RCCP began in 1985 as a collaboration of the New York City Public Schools and Educators for Social Responsibility's New York chapter, it took close to two years for these women to realize their dream of making MCS one of only 13 United States school districts and one in Brazil to implement the RCCP as "a comprehensive school-based program in conflict resolution and intergroup relations that provides a model for preventing violence and creating caring and peaceable communities of learning."

In May 1999 Lantieri, Jinnie Spiegler, and Jane Harrison of RCCP National Center came to Modesto to introduce RCCP to administrators, heads of curricula, parents and school board members. The program generally begins with five school sites, but Modesto has qualified seven: Bret Harte, Alberta Martone, Robertson Road and Wilson Elementary Schools; La Loma Jr. High School, and Grace Davis and Thomas Downey High Schools. The criteria for selection as an RCCP school, according to Bailey, had to do with how committed staffs and administrators were to obtaining training and how they envisioned implementing the program."

Teacher training began in late November, when 36 high school teachers and administrators attended an Introductory Training conducted by Harrison, lead trainer for MCS. Also attending were the Human Relations teachers from other schools, who have been able to implement RCCP curriculum and principles in their classes. Since November approximately 45 elementary teachers and administrators, as well as many MCS administrators and classified staff have been trained and the first round of training will culminate with parent training in both Spanish and English this year.

Bailey calculates "there will be approximately 7000 Modesto City Schools students exposed to the RCCP curriculum this year." Additional training sessions will be implemented in future months, including training of trainers within MCS, "offering a chance for true cultural changes in the schools," says Bailey. Implementation of RCCP curricula will be done in a variety areas, including health and human relations classes in the high schools. Bailey hopes to infuse peer mediation training into the second year training curriculum.

Harrison expressed admiration for the determination of the Modesto school community in dealing with diversity issues, and says, "The amazing thing about the Modesto folks is that they are fearless risk-takers." She considers Logan, Burnis and Bailey the "Dynamic Trio" with their combined talents of perseverance, grant writing and facilitating.

The RCCP goal is to show young people "they have choices other than passivity or aggression for dealing with conflict; giving them skills to make those choices real in their own lives; increasing their understanding and appreciation of their own and others' cultures; and empowering them to play a significant role in creating a more peaceful world.

"Social and emotional learning (SEL) is an innovation that must become permanent," says Lantieri. The RCCP vision encompasses the ability to manage emotion, resolve conflict and interrupt bias, and considers these" fundamental skills... that can and must be taught." The program speaks to a growing awareness that "emotional intelligence (EQ) is as, if not more, important than IQ in terms of future success," both in one's career and personal life.

Lantieri believes all schools need to "attend to the whole child and give them the opportunity to become intellectually competent, socially skillful and ethically responsible. "We know we will have succeeded when programs like RCCP are no longer needed, because this broader vision of education (will have been) widely adapted and supported."

RCCP does not claim the ability to bring a quick fix to the social ills of local school districts. It does, however, show in its first evaluation studies from 1990 in NYC Schools and in 1996-97 from Atlanta, Georgia, some remarkable gains.

The New York City Schools study found that 87 percent of the teachers participating in the study reported children were spontaneously using conflict resolution skills, were less violent in the classroom, had increased self-esteem and a sense of empowerment, were more aware of feelings and the ability to verbalize those feelings, used more caring behavior, and had more acceptance of difference. Some 86 percent of teachers reported they listened better to children and had more positive attitudes toward conflict and the possibilities for resolving conflicts in mutually satisfactory ways. Positive changes in classroom climate were attributed to the RCCP curriculum by 81 percent of the teachers. RCCP was rated as excellent or very good by 90 percent of the teachers polled, 74 percent said they were devoting at least 10 periods per month to specific lessons in conflict resolution and 96 percent said they were incorporating conflict resolution concepts into other curricula areas.

The more recent Atlanta studies found that 64 percent of teachers reported less physical violence in the classroom; 75 percent found students to be more cooperative; 92 percent of the students felt better about themselves, and over 90 percent of parents reported an increase in their own communication and problem-solving skills. Suspension rates at the participating middle school decreased significantly compared to the increasing rate among middle schools not implementing the RCCP, and the drop out rate at he RCCP high school decreased significantly compared to the increasing rate among non-participating high schools.

The National Center indicates RCCP can be implemented during the first year of the program for approximately $98 per child, a relatively low figure compared with the MCS $5,765 yearly per-pupil cost ($98 of which is for utilities alone). Further, they point out the positive effects "are not purchased at the expense of children's academic achievement."

The MCS long term goal is to institutionalize RCCP into every school in the district. Burnis says, "We believe it will be the heart and soul of the district."

ACTION: Find out how you can get involved. Call your school (if it is an RCCP site), or Pat Logan, 576-4169, or Beth Bailey, 576-4569.

Making a difference in Maryland
By SATYA ONORATO
AmeriCorps member, Volunteer Maryland

Greetings to all my friends in the Peace/Life Center community! On August 20, 1999, I completed my year with AmeriCorps*VISTA in Sitka, Alaska. After a brief visit home, I boarded a plane for Maryland on August 29 to join Volunteer Maryland, an AmeriCorps program.

Volunteer Maryland trains its "Volunteer Coordinators" in volunteer management "best practices," including program development, recruitment, screening, training, supervision, recognition, media relations, and risk management. The program matches coordinators with non-profit, community, and government agencies throughout Maryland. Coordinators are to develop and expand volunteer programs targeting needs in education, environment, human welfare, and public safety.

As an AmeriCorps member in Volunteer Maryland Class 12, I am working with the Office of Community Resource Development at Baltimore City Department of Social Services (BCDSS) to strengthen and expand the agency's school-based mentoring program. The program recruits BCDSS employees to serve as mentors for students in an elementary school across the street from a BCDSS office.

The past five months have been filled with new experiences. I was in Maryland during Hurricane Floyd in mid-September. I'd never been in a hurricane and was amazed by the strong winds and rain.

One week after the hurricane, our class had a two-day retreat in northeast Maryland. I joined eleven of my classmates to assist with the town's hurricane relief efforts. We cleared trash and brush from behind the police department and removed asphalt from people's yards in areas where roads and driveways were uprooted during the hurricane.

In October I joined 300 Maryland AmeriCorps and AmeriCorps*VISTA members to plant 2,061 trees during the fifth anniversary AmeriCorps Launch at Fort Meade, Maryland. In a highlight of the day, Lieutenant Governor Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, Robert Kennedy's oldest child, administered the AmeriCorps pledge. Townsend pioneered the successful effort to make service-learning a statewide high school graduation requirement, and she continues to advocate for community service in her state.

In early December I had the opportunity to hear Dr. Crystal Kuykendall, an educator, attorney, author, and mentor, during a conference on welfare issues. Her books include From the Rage to Hope: Strategies for Reclaiming Black and Hispanic Students; Improving Black Student Achievement Through Enhancing Self-Image; and Developing Leadership for Parent/Citizen Groups. These books can be ordered at her website, www.crystalkuykendall.com.

Dr. Kuykendall's motivational keynote speech, "Are YOU a Merchant of Hope?" offered advice to service providers on fulfilling their roles as individuals who inspire others to realize their potential and recognize a "high road."

During her talk I was reminded of the many Modesto Peace/Life Center members who have served as "merchants of hope" through their commitment to peace, justice, and a sustainable environment. I feel very grateful to have been influenced by these people as I grew up in Modesto.

In addition to my Volunteer Maryland responsibilities, I have joined an InterCorps Council of Maryland AmeriCorps members from programs throughout the state. To celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King's birthday, we organized a service-learning project for students at Diggs Johnson Middle School in Baltimore. We worked with 6th, 7th, and 8th graders to paint the school's auditorium and to reflect on the legacy of Dr. King.

My Volunteer Maryland class will graduate on July 21, 2000. During the next five months I look forward to many more exciting opportunities with AmeriCorps in Maryland. I welcome correspondence from friends at home, and I send my best wishes to everyone.