Anger is a natural human emotion but how teenagers understand and express it can shape their relationships, choices, and future.
In Peace: The Other Side of Anger (Second Edition), Dave Wolffe offers a compassionate, practical guide for adults who support adolescents, including parents, educators, counselors, social workers, and youth advocates. Drawing from years of hands-on experience, Wolffe introduces the Anger Management Power Program (AMP), a proven framework designed to help teens recognize emotional triggers, communicate effectively, and resolve conflict in healthy ways.
This updated second edition thoughtfully addresses today's realities including the impact of social media, gun violence, and the lasting effects of the pandemic while preserving the core strategies that made the original work so effective. Readers will discover tools that encourage emotional awareness, build empathy, and promote peaceful problem-solving across real-life situations at home, in schools, and within peer relationships.
Rather than suppressing anger, this book teaches how to transform it into understanding, confidence, and connection.
Whether you are raising a teenager, working in education, supporting youth in treatment or group settings, or simply seeking better ways to guide young people through difficult emotions, Peace: The Other Side of Anger provides clear insight, actionable techniques, and hope-filled direction.
Inside you'll find:
- Practical methods for helping teens manage anger constructively
- Guidance for improving communication between adults and adolescents
- Real-world strategies for reducing conflict and building emotional intelligence
- Support for professionals working with youth in schools, agencies, and care facilities
- A compassionate approach focused on long-term peace and personal growth
This book is both a resource and an invitation to help young people feel understood, supported, and empowered to choose peaceful solutions.
Dave Wolffe earned his bachelor of arts degree and master's degree in education from Queens College. He has been an educator for over thirty-five years. He taught grades one through nine for most of his tenure with the New York City Board of Education and was a high school guidance counselor for the last thirteen years of his career. He served as an adjunct lecturer at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City for thirteen years and taught a sociology of conflict course in the Dispute Resolution Program there.Dave Wolffe was certified as a peer mediation specialist from the International Center for Conflict Resolution of Columbia University Teachers College. While working as a high school counselor, this training enabled him to teach high school students to facilitate peer mediation sessions with other students. During this experience, he and many of these young people helped to establish, facilitate, and participate in schoolwide and boroughwide violence-prevention programs. In addition, he is a certified mediator; Westchester Mediation of Cluster, located in Yonkers, New York, granted him this credential. He is also a fellow in the National Anger Management Association (NAMA).In addition, he developed an anger management program known as the Anger Management Power Program (AMP), on which this book is based. Dave has facilitated this training experience with over 1,000 high school students and well over 600 parents, educators, and other individuals who are concerned with youth in this area. He also established and has presented violence-prevention workshops based on this program for the New York City area's teacher education college programs, has worked with mediators in this area, and has created a facilitator-training method for this program.Dave currently resides in Connecticut with his life partner.
