PeaceBuilders Homepage

PeaceBuilders® Creating Safe, Positive Learning Environments

Featured Sites

PeacePartners, Inc. honors our valued partners by celebrating their passion for peace, their creative ideas, and the wonderful implementation strategies they incorporate.

As we continue to support our partners, it is our privilege to showcase PeaceBuilders sites. Don't just take our word for it. Read about some featured sites as they explored their problems, developed their PeaceBuilders solution, and discovered positive outcomes! We invite you to sit back and explore the fantastic PeaceBuilding events happening throughout the United States and U.S. Territories.


Riverview Elementary - Lakeside, CA
You won't find a more dedicated group of PeaceBuilders than the folks at Riverview Elementary. At this school, PeaceBuilders is not a program; it is not just a series of lessons and activities that the children participate in each day. For Riverview Elementary School staff and students, building peace is as fundamental as eating and breathing.

Principal Larry Skeels ensures that PeaceBuilders is an auditory and visible presence and that the PeaceBuilders Principles are always fresh in everyone's mind. And to start the year off with a strong focus on peace, a PeaceBuilders assembly always ends the first week of school. Mr. Skeels and the staff remind children of the school rules - the most essential of which is "Be a PeaceBuilder."

During the assembly, the PeaceBuilders Pledge is broken down and a discussion is held about what it means to be a PeaceBuilder at school, at home, and in the community (on the sports fields, at the mall, and in all public places). Mr. Skeels makes sure to remind everyone that being a PeaceBuilder is a 24 hour a day job.

PeaceBuilders assemblies are held monthly to recognize students for the great work they are doing to make their school more peaceful. Throughout the weeks, months and years, children are acknowledged and rewarded for their PeaceBuilding behaviors.

A rededication to PeaceBuilders is held mid-way through each school year after the winter or spring break. To refresh everyone's commitment to peace, the enthusiastic PeaceBuilders Committee plans a symbolic gesture or event that the whole school is involved in. They invite family, community members, and other schools in the district to share in their celebration.

In years past, their rededication week has included planting a Peace Tree and installing a Peace Pole.

Riverview's Peace Tree, a beautiful Jacaranda, was planted at the front of the school during rededication week in 2005. It is a living reminder that peace needs to be nurtured and cultivated.

This Peace Pole™ is a hand-crafted monument that displays the message "May Peace Prevail on Earth" in different languages, on each of its four sides. The Peace Pole Project includes more than 200,000 Peace Poles, dedicated as monuments to peace, in 180 countries all over the world. Riverview's Peace Pole was erected during rededication week in 2006.

This year, a rededication assembly was held in the morning of the first day they returned from Spring Break.

The whole school met on the blacktop near their new playground.

Principal Skeels, as always, did a fantastic job of reminding students of his expectations of them and he urged them to continue being the best PeaceBuilders they can be.

Each rededication week includes fun activities that remind children why it's important to be PeaceBuilders. A different principle is the focus each day, and a special emphasis is given to the Principle Give Up Put-Downs, not because put-downs are a particular problem at this amazing site, but to make sure they don't become one. The week ends with a fun PeaceBuilders activity in which the whole site participates.

Along with a semi-annual rededication to PeaceBuilders and regular monthly assemblies, the PeaceBuilders common language and visual cues are abundant at Riverview. There are PraiseBoards in every classroom and in the library and staff lounge, all of which fill up quickly with PraiseNotes in this environment where praise is a powerful, motivating force.

There is a PeaceBuilders mural in the breezeway between buildings that reminds children of the importance of their contribution to peace!

PeaceFeet are painted on the sidewalks to remind children to be PeaceBuilders outside.

There is a beautiful Peace Garden with stepping stones created by each classroom to affirm their individual and communal commitment to building peace.









At Riverview Elementary School, PeaceBuilders is the culture; and because the PeaceBuilders Pledge and Principles are reinforced throughout each day by all adults and peer to peer, children know what is expected of them and work hard to meet and exceed those expectations.

Stepping on to the Riverview campus is like stepping into "PeaceBuilders World." There is no distinction between academics and PeaceBuilders, or between play and PeaceBuilders, or between interpersonal relationships and PeaceBuilders. At Riverview, building peace is simply the way of life.


Home    Who We Are    What We Do    Newsroom    Program Materials    Training    Members Only    Contact Us

Terms & Conditions | Site License | Privacy Policy | Copyrights & Trademarks | Site Map
© 2024 PeacePartners, Inc. All rights reserved. PeaceBuilders is a registered trademark of PeacePartners, Inc.