Peer Mediation

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Rationale/Author’s Position The Western Justice Center (WJC) organization function is to promote conflict resolution education and peer mediation in schools. Evident, the conflict arises every day and everywhere, like in school settings, where one student has an issue with another. Specifically, WJC objective is to train teachers at school to conflict resolution, mediation skills, then train the peer students to mediate as well, so when in conflict the peer student is able to mediate a dispute with a trained support. As illustration, disputes between students usually end up with a physical fight, bullying and frequently ends with lost friendship. In the event there is a disagreement the students have an opportunity to go to peer mediator…show more content…
The mediation course educates adult students regarding the mediation skills and the usefulness of the process, so why deprive the youth from this skill. The widespread use of the mediation system in serious life conflicts and has proven the beneficial. The mediation methods do no discriminate against age or severity of the issue, and WJC program has validated the essence of this system. As children grow, they learn from the surrounding and adapt the acquired info in their behavior, so it is adults' responsibility to coach how to react to disagreement and how to approach the resolution process. That is to say, it is common for youth to defend him/ herself in case of a conflict by raising their voice, using malicious words or even using violence, since these behaviors are learned based on experiences. For this reason, the peer mediation program is a wise way to coach children to different behavior like active listening, understanding, compassion and ability to freely talk. I grew up in the generation where conflict in school was resolved by the teacher or in principles office and then transferred to parents, there was not an opportunity to explain my behavior; I was just left with punishment or a verdict. I have been taking ADR classes to educate myself, be self-aware and able to approach…show more content…
As can be seen the peer mediation has helped large amount of student to avoid violence and resolve the problem, like Kowalski, Kathiann M. indicates in the article "Peer mediation success stories: in nearly 10,000 schools nationwide, peer mediation helps teens solve problems without violence." One of the major strength in the article was the paragraph with research’s numbers, which showed the impact of the peer mediation program. This shows this program has real influence on students at school and at home. However, the article could have mentioned more schools that have taken the program in and are currently using the system. As has been said, “ seeing is believing “, when educators see the immensely significant this system has on the other school, this could be the push they need to implement it. Likewise, the Western school of Law has taken them time to teach their law student mediation skills and gone to juvenile detention facilities to help teens to be able to learn how to deal with conflict and later stay out of trouble. This entire article is showing the value in the peer mediation and simple mediation amongst teens. Mostly the article demonstrates the strong arguments, but there could be more info on how much these program costs, in order for the reader to understand the reason not as many schools take part in this
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