Reducing Anger and Violence in Schools

Book excerpt: William Ketterer is the winner of the APA 2021 Distinguished Contributions of Applications of Psychology to Education and Training Award This book provides school teachers, counselors, administrators, therapists, and parents an accessible and evidence-based approach to reduce violence in schools. The work outlines how self-esteem controls emotions and helps regulate expression of aggressive and violent feelings and behavior. The work demonstrates in three distinct parts how faculty can reduce and prevent violence in their schools by using the student-teacher relationship: theory, case studies, and learning activities. Anger and violence are reduced through increasing children’s self-esteem, which is developed through important relationships with adults. The book invites teachers, school counselors, school psychologists, and other school administrators to rethink their relationships with children and to incorporate the relational ingredients needed to increase children’s self-esteem by adopting features of evidence-based psychotherapy and demonstrating how such approaches can be applied in schools.