Adapting to the Pandemic: A Community-Based Partnership to Develop Online Peace Educa-tion During the First Year of the Pandemic

This paper describes a community-engaged project during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic to develop an online peace education toolkit that was preliminarily tested in one middle school. The goal was to provide accessible tools and strategies for teachers at the school to help students cope, adapt, and thrive while simultaneously bolstering their social emotional skills, a foundational element of character education (Lerner et al., 2017). We present the project as an example from peace education to demonstrate a whole school process to support young people’s social and moral development. This approach builds on scholars who have advocated for whole school approaches to thinking about character education (e.g., Elias, 2014). The case exemplifies being attuned to context, engaging diverse stakeholders, and creating opportunities for student leadership and growth.