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Empowering Peace and Justice Education:

An Actionable Framework for Elementary Educators and Learners

This guidebook offers actionable strategies to embed peace education in your life, classroom and school culture.

Featuring over 100 lessons and practices, it emphasizes culturally relevant pedagogy, trauma informed care and creating brave, democratic spaces for a more just and peaceful world.

The framework centers Five Peace Actions:

  • Seek Peace Within Yourself and Others

  • Respect Diversity

  • Protect Our Environment

  • Reach Out In Service

  • Be A Responsible Citizen Of The World

Note: the Five Peace Actions were created by (and used with permission from) the organization World Citizen Peace.

Praises for Empowering Peace & Justice Education

  • This empowering book explores the intersection of peace and justice for culturally relevant teaching. It offers a valuable framework for elementary educators, ranging from transformative insights to practical strategies.

    Dr. Namrata Sharma, State University of New York, USA

  • A wonderful addition to the growing literature in peace education by its timely inclusion of newer topics, including the necessity of recognizing trauma informed care and our understanding of culturally relevant pedagogy. The authors, both experienced educators, offer both philosophical and very practical hands-on ways of implementing peace education practice in a variety of settings.

    Mary Lee Morrison, Ph.D. co-author Peace Education 3rd edition (McFarland)

  • I love, love, love the lessons.

    Jodie Wellman, 4th Grade Teacher

  • One of the most needed and seminal books on education of our time. A theoretical and practical guide on shaping a future where education plays its most important role - building a more just, compassionate, and sustainable world for all.

    Gal Kleinman, Director, Education for Global Peace 

  • So many of us carry the scars inflicted by a world that has not recovered from its addiction to violence. We are injured by the quiet violence of apathy and isolation. We are plagued by the systemic violence of ableism, sexism, racism, and classism. We are broken by the overt violence of conflict and war. So many of us are connected to the institutions that do the scarring — indentured by our paychecks, our loyalties, our histories, our fears. In this, we are both perpetrator and victim. And we are not okay. We need a different kind of journey. I think that for a lot of us, this book can be the first steps on that odyssey.

    Cornelius Minor, Brooklyn Based Educator, Author

  • This book gives students a voice to show how they belong and connect with their community members.

    Melissa, Public Montessori Educator

  • Your work is greatly needed, and I admire your passion.

    Melinda, Teacher of Gifted & Talented Students s here

  • As a peacebuilding professional and now as a grandfather, I’ve long been looking for a book that would help teachers and parents introduce our field to children in their formative years. Here it is.

    Charles Hauss, Senior Fellow for Innovation, Alliance for Peacebuildingoes here

  • I believe this work is vital in our world today. As educators, we are plagued with witnessing and participating in a system that in many ways is oppressive and breaking down. As individuals we can be proponents for peace, working with purpose to make a difference for students, families and our communities. Being dedicated to peace education is a powerful and radical act. Let's lean in with love and lean into the movement to create a peaceful world!

    Montessori Teacher, M.Ed., MAHS

  • Julie Lillie and Carey Seeley Dzierzak have adopted World Citizen Peace’s Five Peace Actions to create a well-researched and deeply grounded framework for peacelearning. If we want to see peaceful change in our schools, we must take up the challenge and be the change. Empowering Peace and Justice Education demystifies that challenge, offering teachers and students a transformational path to becoming peacemakers and world citizens together. We are proud that World Citizen Peace’s Five Peace Actions have inspired this important work.

    Caren Stelson, Author, Educator and Board Chair of World Citizen Peace 

  • Empowering Peace and Justice Education is a transformative guide poised to make a profound impact on the field of education and on communities. It’s the peace education guide that’s been missing. It is unique in offering an actionable, trauma-informed, and culturally-attuned framework that goes beyond theory, enabling educators (and community leaders) to cultivate holistic learning environments centered on peace and justice. Julie Lillie and Dr. Carey Seeley Dzierzak bring decades of experience as literacy and peace educators, with advanced degrees and extensive backgrounds in culturally relevant and trauma-informed practices. Together, they challenge us to rethink traditional educational priorities, advocating instead for a "whole person" approach where reading and literacy skills are intertwined with empathy, understanding, and cultural sensitivity. This book is an invaluable resource for educators and advocates passionate about shaping a more peaceful and just world. By moving beyond theoretical concepts into actionable frameworks, it provides a blueprint for real-world change, fostering communities of young citizens equipped with literacy, empathy, and resilience.

    Kate Towle, Author. Community Weaver. Educator

This book is for anyone interested in learning about peace and justice education and in implementing its practice with primary and elementary learners (ages and/or developmental levels).

  • Grounded in hope, culturally relevant pedagogy and trauma informed care.

  • Over 100 peacelearning lessons and practices for creating cultures of peace!

  • Emphasis on literacy, language, social emotional learning and engagement.

  • Co-create brave, democratic spaces.

  • Peacelearning goals (‘pursuits’) and practices connected to peace actions.

  • The peace action framework supports multiple lenses of identity; self, student, school vision and culturally affirming systems.

  • Peacemakers in Practice share inspiring peace action stories.

Behind The Cover…

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About the Authors

Headshot of Julie smiling and wearing a dark blue top and grass and trees are in the background.

Julie Lillie

Julie Lillie, M.S., is a peace-centered educator with over fifteen years of experience in diverse preK-12 settings, including as a teacher, instructional leader, literacy specialist, equity coach and curriculum developer.

We are here to be thought partners, to lead, coach, consult, speak, inspire and provide virtual or in-person professional learning support and guidance.

Headshot of Carey with green vines in background

Dr. Carey Seeley

Carey Seeley Dzierzak, Ed.D., is a dedicated social-justice centered educator involved in education for over twenty-five years working in diverse settings. She has been a first-grade and literacy teacher, instructional coach, curriculum director, assistant principal and principal.

a peace sign made in the sand with various seashells

We are advocates for a deep and transformational peacelearning process. We also understand this is not a small undertaking. A change in the human consciousness and society will take more than this book. However, contained within are the ideals of this transformation that is already in motion within the larger space-time continuum. Every individual impacts the collective - and the collective impacts the individual. We call on educators, leaders, parents, community members and children to be aware of and engage in their evolutionary role of creating a world in which all people, beings and organisms have their basic needs and rights met and live in harmony with others and planet Earth.

This framework, lessons and practices are dedicated to whom we view as the seeds of peace, our children. We believe children already have the internal instructions to cultivate and seek peace.