Promulgating Peace

Twenty years after her Fulbright, Anna Parlett-Bickford ’82 remains firmly against violence

By Jillian Cohan

Principal Parlett-Bickford (pictured with students Alexander McAvoy and Christina Weaver) uses the conflict-resolution skills she developed on a Fulbright in Iceland to keep Fawn Elementary running smoothly.

I’m a peace-studies person, but today I’m glad there’s someone in my parking lot with a gun.”

Anna Parlett-Bickford ’82 doesn’t have time to question the irony. The man standing guard over Fawn Area Elementary is a police officer. As principal, Parlett-Bickford is enforcing a lockdown. The mild-mannered blond makes an unlikely gun advocate, but right now she just wants to make sure her students are safe.

Violence has awakened sleepy Stewartstown, Pa., where Parlett-Bickford grew up riding her Schwinn down country lanes and everyone knew her simply as “Joanna’s daughter.” Last night an overwrought mother threatened one of her teachers. Yesterday a 14 year old in the school district next door murdered the junior-high principal, then turned a .22-caliber pistol on himself.

Parlett-Bickford is taking it hard. “My 5 year old came home yesterday and said ‘Mom, a middle-school principal’s been shot.’ She knows I’m a principal and all I’m thinking is ‘You’re my baby, why can’t I protect you from this?’ ”

At moments like these, she remembers a place where her kids wouldn’t have to worry about school violence. If they lived in Iceland, she thinks, her daughters could play freely, stay up late and visit friends whenever they wanted. She wouldn’t have to keep tabs on them because everyone would know Abby and Elisa were Anna and Larry’s children.

Parlett-Bickford first set foot on Scandinavian soil in 1977. As a high-school exchange student she lived with a family of seven in a suburb of the capital, Reykjavík. She soon discovered that the country had no military to protect its 220,000 residents. The police didn’t carry weapons.

“ People were apologizing for a murder that happened 20 years ago between two French guys in a bar fighting over a woman,” she remembers. “There really wasn’t any crime.”

That vision of a peaceful society stirred Parlett-Bickford’s activist spirit. She wanted to know how to bring nonviolence home.

“ She seemed to be one of the people you wanted in the world because you knew she was going to make it a better place,” says American Studies Professor Lonna Malmsheimer. “Now she’s a teacher. I can’t think of anything that’s a better indicator of someone who wants to serve society.”

Encouraged by Malmsheimer, Parlett-Bickford applied for a Fulbright fellowship to answer the questions her visit to Iceland had raised.

“ My hypothesis [was] that the way they reared their children was something I needed to figure out because if that could be emulated by other cultures, we could get rid of violence in the world,” she says.

Icelandic society, for all its appeal, wasn’t conflict-free. Kids still hit each other on the playground. Brothers still tormented their little sisters. The difference was that everyone knew everyone else’s business. In such a close-knit community, no one would commit crimes, because bringing shame on the family had become the ultimate sin.

Parlett-Bickford’s quest for nonviolent solutions continued once she began her career. As a social-studies teacher she introduced peace studies into the curriculum, getting school-board approval by calling the class International Conflict Resolution. Last year she implemented a bullying-prevention program at Fawn Elementary. Even on this dark day, she digs up her old books on nonviolent organizing for a friend’s daughter who wants to hold a peace vigil.

“ The original topic of my [Fulbright] research still interests me greatly,” she says. “How do some cultures manage to evolve and settle conflicts in peaceful ways? How do we enculturate children to embrace peace and shun violence?”

She thinks the answer lies in breaking cycles of family violence when kids are young, but on days like this one her optimism dulls.

“ When I was in college I used to believe nurture was everything … now I don’t know. In adolescence something kicks in with kids. They could have every intervention possible early on and still become violent teen-agers.”

Parlett-Bickford has a way with troubled teens, says Lydia Schnetzka, a family friend and school psychologist. “She always finds the good, even in some of the most troubled students I’ve worked with. She’ll invite them to her office for a Jolly Rancher and a chat and help turn them around.”

Evidence of Parlett-Bickford’s influence lingers long after the hard cases have graduated from her care. In her office, sharing space with snapshots of her daughters, are the tokens they leave behind. A drawing from hyperactive 7-year-old Skylar is tacked on the bulletin board. A rough sculpture from Billy, one of her older students who was no stranger to residential-treatment homes, sits on the windowsill.

“ She has an awareness of how to change the sound of things to get people to listen,” Malmsheimer says. It works with angry parents, difficult superintendents and especially with troubled kids.

It also works with her family. Take her husband’s job, for instance. For 20-odd years Larry Bickford has worked at Aberdeen (Md.) Proving Ground, a military test site. His work as a chemical engineer has prompted spirited dinner-table debates.

These days the couple spends more time driving their daughters to Girl Scout meetings and piano lessons than discussing war and peace. But Parlett-Bickford brings her peace-studies knowledge with her every day.

“ It’s certainly not at the forefront of my mind anymore because I have hundreds of things that I do, but it’s really paramount in the way that I relate to and approach people.”

When the principal finishes her rounds of the school, the police officer is still out front. Reassured, Parlett-Bickford tackles the paperwork in her inbox. On top is a letter from a company marketing The Bully Free Zone, a conflict-resolution program. It reminds her just how far she is from Iceland.