Students learn to use words, not fists
JAMS Rodney Johnson sat back in his seat, listening as the two junior high school students sitting before him bickered about a fight that had occurred earlier, a tiff sparked by name calling.
One of the students turned to Johnson, annoyed, remarking “I don’t like this side of you.”
It was the first dispute that the eighth-grader had resolved as a peer mediator at John Adams Middle School, an awkward first experience considering the altercation involved two of his good friends.
“I’m at work right now,” he responded at the time. “I’m a professional.”
The aspiring professional basketball player is among the more than 25 students that participate in the Peer Mediation and Conflict Resolution Program at John Adams Middle School, an extra-curricular activity where students, not teachers, resolve the variety of conflicts that can arise among adolescents during a volatile developmental time, from relationship and friendship break-ups to even something as seemingly minor as looking at another student in the “wrong way.”
Erica Zacharie of the Los Angeles County Bar Association operates the program at both Lincoln and John Adams middle schools, training and working with more than 60 students between the two locations.
The program aims to eliminate the instances of fighting between students, teaching at a young age that discourse is a better way to resolve conflict rather than resorting to physical violence. Students are selected to serve as arbitrators rather than teachers, expanding the comfort level for the parties involved in the dispute, and leaving the teachers more time to focus on actual instruction and student learning.
“The students know what the social structure is, they know the gossip and who is friends with whom,” Zacharie said.
The handful of students selected every year go through a rigorous 30-hour, three-day training weekend in February with the LA County Bar Association, learning the ins and outs of dispute resolution, the different types of conflicts that could arise, such as ethnically driven altercations. Much like professional mediation training, the students draft settlement agreements and most importantly, learn the importance of staying neutral, which in these students’ case can be difficult considering they know the interested parties.
“We’re taught to communicate than take both sides,” said Franky Garcés de la Torre, an eighth-grader at JAMS.
The peer mediators, many of whom have been in the program for more than a year, preside over at least one dispute every month. Mediation request forms, filled out by a student involved in the dispute or a third-party, such as a teacher, are submitted in a drop-off box.
“We’re there to help them solve the problem, not solve the problem for them,” said Carlos Illamas, a JAMS eighth-grader who joined the program two years ago.
For the students, the most challenging aspect of mediating is to stay neutral, even if they might know the problem up close and personally because it involves their friends.
For Nick Kennerly, a seventh-grader at Lincoln Middle School, there’s no point in picking sides, saying that “if you don’t help them, the conflict won’t be solved.”
Apart from cutting down on the cases of fighting at the middle schools, the program also helps students develop leadership skills and builds on self-esteem.Many of the students that have been with the program for a few years have noted seeing an improvement in the way in which they manage their own problems.
Such has been the case for Paige Greoenwild, a Lincoln eighth-grader who joined the program last year.
“I now try to put myself in their position,” Greoenwild said. “You learn that you might be messing up too because nobody’s perfect.”
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on December 25, 2007. Read the original PDF.