Doug Noll Media Appearances and Press Releases

Media Appearances

The Fresh Outlook, June 13, 2015, EBRU Network. Doug is on a panel discussing the implications of the NY prison escape.

Press Releases

Safe Schools and Learning Environments Project Arms Teachers with Communication Skills Instead of Weapons

Professional mediator Douglas Noll announces the nationwide expansion of his Safe Schools and Learning Environments Project

Fresno, California (PRWEB) September 11, 2014

Professional mediator, award winning lawyer and award winning author Douglas Noll announces nationwide expansion of his Safe Schools and Learning Environments Project. Started as a pilot project for the Fresno Unified School District, Noll is now expanding the project nationwide in an effort to reduce school violence and bullying. Noll’s project trains teachers how to de-escalate angry or emotional students in less than two minutes. The teachers are equipped to teach students the same skills to use with their peers. Noll’s decision to expand the pilot project nationwide came in part as a response to some US states, including four Missouri school districts, adopting laws allowing teachers to carry concealed weapons and training them how to shoot.

“Arming teachers treats the symptoms, not the origins of the underlying problems. And, what happens to the mental stability of a teacher that has to stare down and shoot a kid? This has far reaching social, emotional and legal implications. There is a better way,” Noll advises.
Douglas Noll, award winning mediator and co-founder of the Prison of Peace Project, has been retained by the Restorative Practices staff of the Fresno Unified School District to bring the skills and techniques he and colleague Laurel Kaufer refined in maximum security prisons to school sites. Along with 8 other California school districts, Fresno Unified will be graded by the socio-emotional learning of their students. The district’s job is to teach students how to be emotionally intelligent. Noll’s innovative techniques, based on how the human brain actually processes emotional information, will be used as a part of this new learning process. Noll started training teachers in June and will pick up again during the fall, training teachers how to read and respond to intense emotional situations in the classroom.

“Instead of arming teachers with lethal weapons and asking them to switch from nurturer to SWAT first responders, I arm teachers with the powerful personal skills that allow them to calm an angry child or shut-down teenager in 90 seconds or less. I hope to inspire teachers to teach kids how to do the same with their friends and families. Laurel Kaufer and I refined these techniques in our award-winning Prison of Peace project. We have taught scores of violent offenders how to de-escalate potentially lethal arguments in seconds. I am confident this project will succeed with teachers, children, and teens,” Noll says.

Teachers and administrators in the public school systems are both alarmed and afraid of the unprecedented amount of shootings in schools across the country. This project is a hopeful solution to prevent violence and bullying that threatens the life and freedom of the school-aged child. Teachers are weary of being afraid to go to work. Parents are afraid to send their children to school.

“When the FUSD Restorative Practices officials heard me talk about our results from our Prison of Peace Project (for which Doug Noll and Laurel Kaufer were honored as California Lawyer Magazine Lawyers of the Year Award in 2012) and saw the videos, they asked if I could assist them. The project started in June with 30 middle school teachers. As the new school year begins, I will be training high school and middle school teachers in a local high school cluster. We expect significant reductions in disciplinary actions by the teachers, more engaged students, and a much improved school climate,” Noll explains. For more information about the Safe School Project visithttps://dougnoll.com/safe-schools-project/

Doug Noll is an award winning peacemaker, award winning lawyer, and award winning author of the book Elusive Peace: How Modern Diplomatic Strategies Could Better Resolve World Conflicts (Prometheus, 2011), the winner of the International Peace And Justice Book Award. Doug Noll is a core faculty member of the American Institute of Mediation, a preeminent mediation training institute founded by Lee Jay Berman. Doug won the California Magazine Lawyer of the Year Award for his Project Prison of Peace (http://www.PrisonofPeace.org) Doug conducts a comprehensive course on listening and de-escalating anger at https://www.NegotiateACenteredLife.com. For more information contact Diane at info@inspiredmc.com

The Secret Lives of Teens

Doug Noll, Expert in Criminal Violence, has worked with dozens of violent offenders, learning the root causes of conflict, trauma, and violence. He is bringing his knowledge into schools to help prevent school violence.

Fresno, Ca…..Doug Noll, award winning mediator and lawyer, teaches parents and teachers how to de-escalate angry, alienated students. He has been retained by the Fresno State Unified School District to help teachers teach kids how to manage their emotions and feelings, develop empathy, and learn deep listening skills. Noll is bringing this work into schools for the purpose of teaching people how to deal with teens before a violent eruption (https://dougnoll.com/safe-schools-project/).

“Depression, rejection, alienation, and isolation were some of the root causes of the violent behavior of prisoners in the Prison of Peace project. These are the same causes of school violence. Our techniques allow the angriest student to be heard at a deep emotional level, which de-escalates the potential for violence. We have learned that violence occurs only because it seems like the only choice available. When an angry teen is listened to at a deep, core, emotional level, the intensity of feelings is rapidly diminished. Violence no longer seems like the only option. The skill of listening this way has to be learned, and so we teach it with the hope that it will save lives as it has in the prisons we have worked in.”

Noll teaches parents the silent and secret lives teens live while maintaining a seemingly normal demeanor. To determine a teen’s discontent before an eruption, Noll outlines the common warning signs. “A divorce, death, or illness in a family can trigger a teen’s confusion and or fear. Common teen social experiences, like a relationship breakup (boys take a breakup harder than girls generally), getting cut from the team, or an argument with a friend can cause teens to react, sometimes with terrible or irreversible consequences,” Noll explains. “There are often signs, sometimes subtle, but in retrospect, findings always lead to clues. It is critical that parents know the difference between normal teen behavior, and behavior that is a precursor for violence.”

Noll and his colleague Laurel Kaufer, are the founders of the award winning project Prison of Peace, which has trained hundreds of male and female violent offenders how to become peacemakers and mediators within their prisons.

Doug Noll is an award winning peacemaker, award winning lawyer, and award winning author of the book Elusive Peace: How Modern Diplomatic Strategies Could Better Resolve World Conflicts (Prometheus, 2011), the winner of the International Peace And Justice Book Award. Doug Noll is a core faculty member of the American Institute of Mediation, a preeminent mediation training institute founded by Lee Jay Berman. Doug won the California Magazine Lawyer of the Year Award for his Project Prison of Peace (http://www.PrisonofPeace.org)Doug conducts a comprehensive course on listening and de-escalating anger at https://www.NegotiateACenteredLife.com. Doug has been awarded the 2014 Encore Fellow Prize for his tireless work teaching and guiding people towards peaceful conflict resolution. For more information contact Diane at info@inspiredmc.com

Douglas E. Noll Honored as Encore.org 2014 Purpose Prize Fellow: Outstanding Social Innovators Working to Change the World

Encore.org honors the achievements of 38 Purpose Prize fellows, social innovators over 60 years of age who are dedicated to finding solutions to challenging social problems, including Douglas Noll, a co-founder with his colleague Laurel Kaufer, of Prison of Peace.

San Francisco, CA…..On October 28, in Tempe, Arizona, Encore.org will honor the achievements of 38 Purpose Prize fellows, social innovators over 60 years of age who are dedicated to finding solutions to challenging social problems, including Douglas Noll, a co-founder with his colleague Laurel Kaufer, of Prison of Peace. “I never imagined that in my mid-sixties I would be finding ways to serve others in a deep and meaningful way. Encore.org honors not just my work, but the dedicated work of the peacemakers and mediators we have trained and mentored in California prisons. These inmates have moved from serving life sentences to living lives of service.”

“Douglas E. Noll and the 2014 Purpose Prize fellows have applied their abundant talents to address a broad range of issues, including poverty, racism, community health, education, veterans’ issues and the environment,” said Eunice Lin Nichols, director of The Purpose Prize. “Despite their differences, they are united in the belief that the work they are doing now ranks among their most significant accomplishments, impacting thousands of people.”

Now in its ninth year, The Purpose Prize is the nation’s pre-eminent large-scale investment in people over the age of 60 who are combining their life skills and talents for the social good. The Purpose prize is a program of Encore.org (formerly Civic Ventures), a nonprofit organization that is building a movement to tap the skills and experience of those in midlife and beyond to improve communities and the world.

The 2014 Purpose Prize fellows represent inspiring examples of social innovation with growing potential for impact. As Purpose Prize fellows, they gain valuable access to a dynamic learning community of like-minded encore leaders and innovators.

“Encore.org is proud to recognize the achievements of Douglas Noll and the 2014 Purpose Prize fellows cohort. They stand as powerful examples for the millions of Americans who believe that using their life experience to make a difference – big or small, across communities, continents and generations – is a vital responsibility,” Nichols said.

Created in 2005 by Encore.org with major investments from The Atlantic Philanthropies and the John Templeton Foundation, The Purpose Prize has honored over 430 Purpose Prize winners and fellows in nine years. Taken together, their work showcases the enormous, and too-often overlooked, value of experience, and disproves the notion that innovation is the sole province of the young.

See more at: https://www.encore.org. Contact: Encore.org media line (415-890-0142) or Marci Alboher, VP of Marketing and Communications, at malboher(at)encore(dot)org

About The Atlantic Philanthropies. The Atlantic Philanthropies are dedicated to bringing about lasting changes in the lives of disadvantaged and vulnerable people. Atlantic is a limited-life foundation that makes grants through its five program areas: Aging, Children & Youth, Population Health, Reconciliation & Human Rights, and Founding Chairman.

About the John Templeton Foundation. The John Templeton Foundation serves as a philanthropic catalyst for discoveries relating to the Big Questions of human purpose and ultimate reality. The Foundation supports research on subjects ranging from complexity, evolution, and infinity to creativity, forgiveness, love, and free will. It encourages civil, informed dialogue among scientists, philosophers, and theologians and between such experts and the public at large, for the purposes of definitional clarity and new insights.

About Encore.org. Encore.org is a national nonprofit that is building a movement to tap the skills and experience of those in midlife and beyond to improve communities and the world. The Purpose Prize is a program of Encore.org.

A brief summary of Doug Noll’s Prison of Peace project follows.
Founded in 2009, Prison of Peace trains inmates serving life sentences in California prisons to be peacemakers, mediators, mentors and trainers. Through an intensive learning process, inmates in both men’s and women’s prisons learn how to de-escalate conflicts quickly, listen empathically, and help fellow inmates resolve the myriad arguments, conflicts, and disputes that arise in the prison environment.
The goals of the project are:

To teach personal emotional intelligence skills to inmates
To teach essential personal problem-solving skills to inmates
To introduce and teach the restorative process of peace circles
To introduce and teach the principles of moral engagement
To teach basic mediation skills as third party neutrals
To embed peacemaking, defined as collaborative, respectful problem-solving processes to resolve interpersonal and group conflicts, within the prison.
To create capacity to continue the expansion of training and knowledge within the prison by training inmates to be instructors and trainers.
To create a sustainable program of peace-building within the prison
To demonstrate the power of non-coercive, non-violent methods of conflict resolution to correctional officers and prison administrators
To demonstrate the power of human redemption, transformation, and growth in all humans, regardless of crimes committed or circumstances of life

Successful Violence Reduction Project Used in California State Prisons Now Applied to California Public School System to Prevent Violence and Bullying

Award Winning California Mediator Working with Fresno Unified School District for Innovative Plan to Prevent Violence and Bullying in Schools

Los Angeles, CA…..Doug Noll, award winning mediator and co-founder of the Prison of Peace Project, has been retained by the Restorative Practices staff of the Fresno Unified School District to bring the skills and techniques he and colleague Laurel Kaufer refined in maximum security prisons to school sites. Along with 8 other California school districts, Fresno Unified will be graded by the socio-emotional learning of their students. The district’s job is to teach students how to be emotionally intelligent. Doug Noll’s revolutionary neuro-science and communication skills will be used as a part of this new learning process. Noll started training teachers in June and will pick up again during the fall, training teachers how to learn and model emotional intelligence to students.

“When the FUSD Restorative Practices officials heard me talk about our results from our Prison of Peace Project (for which Doug Noll and Laurel Kaufer were honored as California Lawyer Magazine Lawyers of the Year Award-2012) and saw the videos, they requested that I assist them. The project started in June, just last month, with 30 middle school teachers. On August 4th, I am training 12 school principals. As the new school year begins, I will be training high school and middle school teachers in the McLane High School cluster. We expect significant reductions in disciplinary actions by the teachers, more engaged students, and a much improved school climate,” Noll explains.

The teachers taking the early training enthusiastically embraced Noll’s innovative skills and techniques. They learned how to deeply listen by ignoring the words of the student. Noll says, “This skill is counter-intuitive, must be taught, and takes some time to master. However, our experience in maximum security prisons demonstrates that this skill can transform lives in amazing ways. We expect even better results at school sites.” Noll’s program is based on new research about how the human brain processes emotions. From that research Noll and Kaufer developed a listening technique that allowed trained inmate to de-escalate an angry peer in 90 seconds or less. Recognizing the power of the skills, Noll is now training school teachers to be able to de-escalate an emotional, angry student in 90 seconds or less while remaining completely calm and in control—a much needed process in the public school climate today.

Neuroscience Combined with Communication Skills Creates New Emotional Intimacy Online Course Developed by Award Winning Author, Peacemaker, and Lawyer

Fresno, Ca………..New online course ‘Its Pure Magic’ offered through the website Negotiate a Centered Life, created by award winning lawyer, award winning author, and professional mediator Douglas Noll, teaches participants how to calm an angry person and develop deep connection in 90 seconds using Noll’s unique formula for developing deep listening skills.

“After years of studying the neuroscience of emotional wiring, and working with prison inmates through my Prison of Peace project, I developed a formula using neuroscience in combination with communication tools. The outcome amazes participants when they learn that they can develop a deep connection, intimacy and have a relationship transformation through listening in a new way,” Noll explains.

Noll named the course Its Pure Magic after hearing participants and inmates exclaim after taking the course, “It’s Pure Magic!” While the online course is new, Noll has been teaching these principles for years in different applications to different audiences, always with rave reviews. The online course includes modules, videos and a workbook.

“The content in this course is rich with skill building, which can be accomplished relatively quickly. People say it changes their lives and relationships. Inmates say that if they would have taken this course earlier in their life they would not be in prison now,” says Noll.

Its Pure Magic offers skill building not taught in traditional classrooms. These skills are often counterintuitive to the way most people are trained to communicate. “Because it is a different way to communicate than traditionally taught, people are at first caught off guard, and then elated to see the results after implementing what they learn,” Noll adds.

Skills learned in Its Pure Magic can be used by teachers, parents, spouses, children, employees and employers. “No matter what context these tools are used in, the outcome surpasses than any other form of communication,” Noll says.