By Jennifer Mrozowski
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Taft Elementary fifth-graders (from left) Brittany Green, 10, Sherhonda Colvin, 10, Sheray Lowe, 11 and Kareem Kimbrough, 10, work on a survival project in a workshop with a trainer from the Center for Peace Education. Sessions focus on communication, conflict management and other problems. (Gary Landers photos)

Working on a 'Survivor' scenario, Antonio Bryant, 12, (left) and Jeffrey Phillips, 11, Taft sixth-graders, try to list 10 items necessary to get by on a desert island.

MOUNT AUBURN - Food. A first-aid kit. Blankets. Flashlights.

Those were items that a group of sixth-graders at Taft Elementary recently agreed they'd bring if stranded for 30 days on a desert island.

But they had a spirited disagreement about the need for a cell phone.

"You need a cell phone in case one of us gets hurt bad," Jamese Jones, 12, said, leaning over a table with three other students.

"You don't need a cell phone," Ryan Williams, 12, countered. Instead: "We need extra batteries."

Together they reasoned that they wouldn't be able to get off the island even if they had a cell phone. They opted for more practical items: sticks, wood, matches, a lighter and soap.

The activity was part of a workshop on cooperation skills provided by the Center for Peace Education in Mount Auburn, an organization founded in 1979 to promote peace in Cincinnati. The center reaches 3,000 students and teachers each year, from kindergarten through eighth grade, in 15 public and private schools mostly in Hamilton County.

It's one Greater Cincinnati program that aims to help kids, some as young as 5, learn to solve conflicts through cooperation and good communication. Learning those skills now will give kids a better chance at succeeding in life later, the thinking goes.

"A lot of kids, on a basic level, don't know how to positively interact with one another," Taft Elementary Principal David Schmitz says. "They can't discuss something with one another without it becoming a shouting match. We're giving kids some skills to interact with one another."

The program, funded by the city of Cincinnati, foundations, individuals and state and federal grants, teaches students to be silent when others are talking and to use what trainers call "put-ups," or compliments, instead of put-downs.

But not all classes readily embrace the concepts.

While the sixth-grade students quietly went through their exercises, used teamwork and listened to each other's responses, a fifth-grade class spent most of its time arguing with each other, pushing, shouting and grabbing paper or pencils from fellow group members.

At the end, the trainer told the children she doesn't mind waiting for them to calm down, but they wasted the entire 45-minute workshop.

She asked the kids to vote if they wanted her to return, and they said yes.

"It's a long-term process," trainer Becky Buschle says. "You don't see the results overnight."