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More than 30 students at Mahurangi College have graduated from a “Leadership through Student
Mediation Programme”, which aims to take an active stand against homophobia, violence, racism and all forms of bullying.
The newly trained peer mediators will work in pairs to set up confidential meetings and resolve differences between students in conflict.
School head of counselling Kerry Jenner, who leads the programme, says it’s important that mediators reflect the diversity found in the school and includes students from varied ethnic backgrounds and transgender students.
“No matter what the conflict is about, we will have a mediator whose background and experiences will be a perfect match to help deal with the situation,” Ms Jenner says.
She says each student has completed two days of training and will have ongoing training to refine their mediation skills further.
Theoretical training was supplemented by games that encouraged team building and communication.
Students who have completed the initial training say creating understanding of where each party is coming from in a conflict situation is a major help in finding a resolution.
“Often you are dealing with students who are at a stage in development where they find it hard to see other people’s perspectives. Mediation helps teach them to see the reasoning behind other people’s actions,” says one.
Bullies come to see how their actions detrimentally affect other aspects of their victims’ lives, and at the same time they begin to understand their own motivations.
Students say that mediation can be just as helpful for the bully as for their victims by discovering what contributes to their destructive behaviour and what they can do about it.
Team games help mediators bolster their communication skills.
Kerry Jenner, standing, leads a round-table discussion with a group of mediators.
Students have also been taught to look beyond the surface to discover the true nature of conflict.
“What a student tells you at first may not be the real story and you have to dig deeper to find the reality,” says one.
A dig about a student’s appearance, for example, might really be related to underlying homophobic attitudes.
One student said he anticipated homophobia and cyber-bullying were likely to be some of the most common issues mediators would deal with.
Mediators encourage students to find their own solutions to conflict. This may mean that the parties agree that they don’t necessarily have to be best friends but will agree to say “hi” and be civil to one another.
Kerry Jenner introduced the mediation programme to Mahurangi College after training mediators in several other New Zealand schools.
The programme proved especially successful in Wellington, where schools began to recognise that mediation was changing the whole culture in the school for the better.
During a presentation to Wellington City Council, police officers commended the mediation programme for reducing crime among school students in the city.
American observers at the meeting invited Ms Jenner to come to the States to share her insights there.
Ms Jenner subsequently taught mediation skills in schools across northern California in a programme funded by the State Department.
