Conflict Resolution, making me more angry by the day

This little lady is Conflict Resolute-ed out. I took the course in CR for two weekends, that's 4-8 on Friday and 9-5 on Saturday and Sunday. FOR TWO WEEKENDS. Have you ever heard of anything crazier? Now, this time might have been warranted had it been used up with lectures and activities that furthered the goals of CR. But, in a stroke of genius, the majority of our time was spent repeating our names and making strange dance moves in a circle, making and re-making name tags, and, of course, trying to navigate the treacherous waters of our facilitators' moods. Truly. You would think that two women trained in conflict resolution and mediation would not resort to teasing and putting-down their participants. Nor should they have treated us, grad students and returning mature students, like the kindergartners many of us hope to teach. So, while the pedagogy was in question, what is the funniest part is that they make it all about The Process yet their own process was rather weak. (Key words will be bolded)

Let me tell you about The Process and save you about $3,000. (The following will be for a negotiation, inclusion of a mediator is a big step later)

First off, before beginning this process you must accept that conflict is inevitable, and that you should face it without fear but with the determination to make the conflict constructive and not destructive.

1. Decide if the matter is worth pursuing. Do you care about the other person, and yourself, enough to make the conflict an issue to be discussed? If you care about your own needs much more than the other person's, you are aggressive, if you care more about the other person you are accommodating. If you care about both yourself and the other person (meaning the relationship is important to you, then you will want to proceed...
2. Choose a setting for The Process: make sure that it's a neutral and convenient spot, pay careful attention that everyone's chairs, cups, pencils, etc. are exactly the same.
3. Greet each other, set a tone of openness and caring
4. Each state what you want from this situation (stop doing..., I want you to..., etc.), this is your position
5. Begin asking probing questions like "How did that action impact you?" and "How does that make you feel?"
6. You have now addressed their needs, be sure you also get yours out there
7. Now it's time for the reframe, where you make a statement that addressed the mutual needs, not positions of each party
8. You can now brainstorm, be sure to be creative and reserve all judgement until you have at least 10 possible solutions on your list. You can then whittle away to the most reasonable solutions.
9. Come to a conclusion, decide if you will document the outcomes and and chose a ritual to formally end the session (handshake, happy dance, kissing, etc.)

In the case of mediation, the mediator will do the facilitating (the question probing) and otherwise will sit back and watch the conflict like it's WWF wrestling.

I do have to say, I really enjoyed a great deal of the activities we participated in (back-to-back fake phone calls, resolutions of our own conflict situations, mediating over a homophobic parent and a gay teacher) and I truly loved meeting such nice people who I could commiserate with. They were all lovely!