Seattle University Collaborative Projects - International Academy of ...

Teaching Conflict Resolution Skills: An Essential Component of the Basic LawSchool CurriculumAnn Woodley, Phoenix School of Law (awoodley@phoenixlaw.edu)Professor Woodley teaches several classes at the Phoenix School of Law which involve basic,but essential conflict resolution skills. Her classes include Mediation Advocacy, ADR, andInterviewing and Counselling. She regularly coaches the mediation teams. Her role as AssociateDean for Teaching and Learning requires that she teach the professors new ideas and approachesfor teaching law. She will present her innovative ideas and exercises that relate to the role ofincorporating conflict resolution skills into the basic law school curriculum.Helping Law Students Find Balance in Their Legal Education: TeachingMindfulness and Contemplative PracticesMary Delores Guerra, Phoenix School of Law (mguerra@phoenixlaw.edu)Professor Guerra will present on the importance of offering law students opportunities to findbalance in their legal education. She will discuss how professors and students can work togetherto reach this goal, planting seeds for students to learn how to use contemplative practices in theirprofessional lives. These practices can enhance students’ professional identities and theirpersonal integrity because students will come to know that they can be “true to themselves” andbe successful practicing attorneys. Professor Guerra has integrated and adopted manymindfulness and contemplative practices into her classes. She teaches Commercial Law,Business Associations, Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) and Interviewing and Counseling.She adopted several practices before she attended law school, including reflective journaling,meditation and yoga. Having benefited from contemplative practices in her own life, she wantedto share these practices with her students to help her students find balance in legal education.When she became a law professor in 2006, she was thrilled to learn that her school, PhoenixSchool of Law, was committed to transforming and humanizing legal education. She beganutilizing a reflective journal, known to her students as the Self-Assessment Book (SAB), in hercommercial law and business associations classes in the fall 2007. After attending, AALS 2010Section on Balance in Legal Education panel, she began incorporating “balance in legaleducation” questions that her students reflected upon and answered in their SAB. In Spring 2011,in her ADR class, she worked collaboratively with her students in several ways, including:allowing them to negotiate which group they would be in for their Advanced WritingRequirement (AWR) (group 1 or group 2, which had different time frames), getting frequent andsubstantive feedback from students regarding the content of the classes, discussing the quantityof pages for the class readings. The highlights of the class for the students and for ProfessorGuerra were the mindfulness exercises and speakers that she brought to class. She has thestudents take a moment of silence, while focusing on their breath, learning to be present. They436