ch class so that every student is aware of their existence and the consequences of violating any rules. School administrators and teachers should ensure that the codes are implemented consistently and firmly but also fairly. Schools should establish counseling programs for students, and assure that students do indeed have access to their counselors. The average high school counselor has between 350-400 students to advise. Needless to say, students are lucky to see their counselor once during a school year, usually when it is effectively counsel the students in the school and to ensure that students have access to their assigned counselor on a regular basis, counselors should be assigned no more than 125-150 students per school year. Counselors should also be relieved of all clerical and other noncounseling responsibilities. Another form of “counseling” is the widespread use of conflict resolution strategies to defuse potentially violent situations and to persuade those involved to use nonviolent means to resolve their differences. Schools that have adopted conflict resolution strategies are trying to teach young people new ways of channeling their anger into constructive, nonviolent responses to conflict. As a means of addressing violence, conflict resolution programs in schools start by identifying a core group of student leaders in the school. This group receives intensive training and supervision in the use of conflict resolution strategies and student mediation. Members of the conflict resolution team then use their skills and knowledge to help maintain order in the school by counseling their peers, intervening in disputes among students, helping them talk through their problems, and training other students to use conflict resolution strategies. Conflict resolution strategies should be used in individual classrooms as well as school wide. In addition, high school team members should visit students in elementary...
