“negotiation is a key to curbing violence”, young people trained to defuse conflicts

Around sixty secondary school students from the metropolis of Lyon attended a workshop to combat school bullying in early June. Between playing basketball and learning negotiation processes, young people were made aware of the violence that surrounds them in order to better understand them.

“A lot of people are unable to communicate, to have friends because of school bullying and I think that’s not good at all”. Gabrielle is in 6ᵉ at Guy Alice college in the 8ᵉ arrondissement of Lyon. She has never suffered from bullying at school, but is aware that it is an increasingly frequent social problem in France today.

Just like Camilla. The young boy from the same establishment is worried about the consequences of this harassment. “It can ruin a person’s life.”, he confides. In college, violence of this kind has already been recorded, especially against young girls, emphasizes Guillaume Lecornué, PE teacher.

On Wednesday June 7, he came to accompany his students for a special workshop, combining basketball, the art of negotiation and the management of school bullying. Organized by the ADN Kids association, the transporter Transdev and the women’s basketball club ASVEL, this sports meeting tries to train the youngest in conflict resolution techniques that are found at the heart of school bullying issues.

“When the referee whistles a foul and you are angry because you think he is wrong, what do you do?” “I will speak to him calmly at the next stoppage of play”, answers a young schoolgirl. Sitting in front of their desks, the middle school students discuss with the supervisors of the ADN Kids association about the proper management of their emotions.

“We are going to come back to what is active listening, assertiveness, asserting my point of view without crushing that of the other. All these techniques, resulting from negotiation, are based on professional practices and a professional method. It gives children the keys to be able to react to deteriorating situations, kicks in the schoolbag, teasing, jostling, before things get out of hand”explains Julie Crouzillac, president of the association and host for the day.

In these workshops, the young woman gets the children to react to different elements found in the negotiation. “It’s a key that comes to curb violence and bullying because it lays down the principles of psychosocial competence”, Julie adds.

The facilitator also awakens middle school students to the notion of “non-negotiable”, those things on which some people are intransigent. “When do I set the rule? When do I disagree with what is being done and said and set a limit? They need to answer these questions to determine their limits.” Julie explains. In front of her, Camille concentrates on doing the requested exercise. On his sheet, he writes “right to the image”, “choice of profession”. At his neighbor, we can read the words “sexism, racism, theft”.

In 2016, the young woman, trainer at ADN, an agency of professional negotiators, opened her field of action to children. She then surrounds herself with psychiatrists, professors, educational engineers and other qualified personnel to set up the project and a first workshop is born in November 2016 in Barre-sur-Seine. Juliette remembers a defining moment during her very first workshops, synonymous with success.

I am doing an intervention in a school in Paris. A little girl on the emotions workshop has a lot to say. We feel that there is a daily life that weighs on her and she is a little entangled, she cannot find the key to act. We continue to run the workshops. We go over questioning techniques, we go over trust, and at the end of the afternoon, after recess, this little Juliette in CE1 comes to tell me: the one who was bothering me, for the first time I I looked and asked her questions and she left. It means that even if it wasn’t won forever, she understood that she was capable of doing it and that there was no reason for her to let herself be.

Julie Crouzillac

President of the ADN Kids association

Since then, some 200 volunteers from the association have traveled the roads of France to train in negotiation as a tool in the fight against school bullying. In total, no less than 2,000 children per year are educated in these issues, 60% of them in primary school.

And this training begins in transport to get to school, college, high school… “We are in the schools, we have the method. Why don’t we do both? We can do something other than just transport the children to the territory”, underlines Hervé Hays Narbonne, Head of Partnerships at Transdev. On May 15, the association and the school bus driver who drives nearly 700,000 children every day, built a partnership to fight against school bullying. Present in Lyon for the sporting event, he follows the activities with great interest.

“It gives children. They come out with a plus, something that lights up”, explains the manager, who is delighted that ADN Kids is helping them to train teams and improve their response capacity. He would like to be able to act in the right way when a case of school violence or bullying occurs in his presence.

Throughout the afternoon, the college students were supervised by women’s ASVEL sportswomen. The top-level sports club is the first of its kind to adopt mission-driven status, which means that their societal mission is on the same level as their sporting mission. “With this event, we are in a pillar to grow through sport, we are in pure transmission. We use the practice of sport to convey much broader educational messages.underlines Marie-Sophie Obama, delegate president of ASVEL feminine.

During the workshops, sports images were thus able to be used to make the situations more concrete. Which made sense according to Christina and Kilia, two young girls, licensed at CTC Rhône sud basket. “Sporting values ​​are values ​​common to everyday life, such as respect, this passion for others and that can help to live it together”admits Kilia.

“We were able to communicate on sporting values. It will help us to be more empathetic towards those who are victims of harassment and mockery. It will help us to listen to them more and give them more attention”, adds Christiana.

Julie is proud of it, the workshop went well. “They played the game well.” admits the young woman speaking of the students. Sitting in the stands, she attends the basketball tournament, the last game of the students’ day. She hopes to see behavior emerge as a result of the exchanges, why not during the matches.