Additional information
by Chris Amirault (Author), Christine Snyder (Author)
Learn how to engage in and resolve conflict productively to improve work relationships and create a more equitable community for children.
Conflicts are inevitable, often hard to navigate, and can quickly multiply and become unmanageable. And resolving conflict requires self-reflection, understanding, and vulnerability. But knowing how to tackle difficult conversations will strengthen relationships, create a more equitable community, and improve the impact educators have on the young children they work with. The first of its kind, Finding Your Way Through Conflict specifically focuses on conflict in early childhood education settings and gives concrete steps and strategies to help manage and resolve it productively. Authors Chris Amirault, Ph.D., and Christine M. Snyder, M.A., have decades of experience in early childhood education programs and conflict resolution. Built on their expertise and their own experiences, the book's conflict scenarios are engaging and authentic, empowering educators to get in and out of conflict in a variety of personal, organization, and cultural contexts. Some of these scenarios include:- The Discombobulated Team: The children's artwork you posted in the classroom yesterday is gone. Who took it down--and why?
- The Intent/Impact Disagreement: You were only trying to help! So why is that parent offended?
- The Unexpected Disaster: Your team planned every aspect of that difficult parent meeting for days. So why was it such a catastrophe?
Author Biography
Chris Amirault, Ph.D., served for two decades as the director of NAEYC-accredited Early Head Start, preschool, and state PK programs in RI and OK. He was president for several years of the Rhode Island Association for the Education of Young Children and has also served in many national leadership capacities, including as Chair of the Council for NAEYC Accreditation, a member of the NAEYC Affiliate Advisory Council, a founding facilitator of NAEYC's Diversity & Equity Interest Forum, and on the NAEYC working groups for developmentally appropriate practice and equity. He has taught undergraduate and graduate courses in early childhood education at Brown University, the Community College of Rhode Island, the University of Oklahoma, and elsewhere, and he served as Director of the Institute for Elementary and Secondary Education at Brown. Chris is the author of Instructional Coaching Essentials, Sparking Learning in Young Children, and coauthor of Finding Your Way Through Conflict, and he has published articles in several early childhood journals and presented many times at state and national early childhood conferences. He has a Ph.D. in cultural studies from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and lives in Salem, OR.
Christine M. Snyder, M.A., has worked in the early childhood education field since 1999 as a teacher, center director, author, and trainer/coach. She holds a master's degree in early childhood education and a bachelor's degree in child development.
She is currently director of the University of Michigan Health System Children's Center and assistant professor in the college of education at Madonna University in Livonia, Michigan. Previously, she was an early childhood specialist at the HighScope Educational Research Foundation in Ypsilanti, Michigan, where she focused on developing professional learning for teachers and curriculum for preschoolers and infants/toddlers.
She facilitates training throughout the United States, internationally, and online, and has published several books, articles, training DVDs, and other classroom resources for teachers.
She lives in Michigan.
