By Oscar Fortunato

What is peer mediation? You may have heard it being mentioned fleetingly, but it has existed for over half a decade. The teacher in charge of Peer Mediation, Mrs. Magaña, describes it as “a group of students that are trained on conflict resolution strategies and to provide the TPA community a resource on dealing with problems with peers on their own.”

Peer mediators are taught valuable communication and problem-solving skills, which they use in both their personal lives and in sessions with other students at Tempe Prep who are in conflict with each other.

If conflict happens between two or more students they will have the chance to attend peer mediation sessions. During these sessions the students that are at odds with each other are helped to work through a problem together with the peer mediators. The administration observed that students open up about their conflict more effectively when in presence of peers, while they are more reluctant to in the presence of adult supervisors that they may find intimidating.

Peer mediation allows students to take ownership of the outcome of the dispute and truly resolve the conflict instead of letting it simmer in the back of their minds.

Peer mediators attend an annual Peer Mediation conference held by the Arizona Association for Conflict Resolution. This conference gives peer mediators from all over the state an opportunity to come together and collaborate and create a network. At the conference, mediators and teachers are taught formal and informal mediation techniques as well as applying those techniques and skills in mock scenarios. Experts in mediation such as lawyers speak at the conference, teaching the mediators and teachers important skills and giving them tips on how to approach different situations.

The Peer Mediation conference is one of the mediators’ favorite parts of the program. Mitchell Rines, one of the more experienced mediators, says that “the field trip is one of the best parts not just because it’s fun, but because it’s a good experience towards the end goal to use those skills later on in life.”

Morgan Cryder, another experienced mediator, explains that they go to the conference every year and “learn a lot of valuable skills like problem solving and how to approach different subjects. It teaches [the mediators] a lot about Peer Mediation and helps [them] become closer to each other as well.”

While Mrs. Magaña finds the conference to be an extremely valuable part of Peer Mediation, her favorite part is “to see the growth of [her] peer mediators, especially when they tell [her] how they used mediation outside of TPA.”

Peer Mediation brings people together at all levels of interaction. Peer mediators acquire skills that help them solve problems between individuals, and the conference helps them come together with mediators from all walks of life. Such conflict-solving skills are indispensable for smooth interactions between people, especially in this epoch in which communication is so prominent.