Forget who is the guilty one
Pupils are capable of more than you think. They can learn to mediate in other pupils’ conflicts. Forget who is the guilty one – any conflict has at least two responsible persons.
Peer mediation and adult mediation have been implemented as a principle at Sjællandsgades Skole in order to involve the pupils in solving conflicts and prevent bullying. The purpose of conflict resolution as an effort area is to make mediation the school’s conflict solving tool. It is also a tool for handling the challenge of being a school that is just as attractive to Danish children and parents as to children and parents with other ethnic background and for the creation of an exciting and innovative school.
Parties in a common conflict
Every year a number of pupils from 5th grade is trained as mediators and five teachers are trained as adult mediators. At Sjællandsgades Skole, the starting point of mediation is that those having a conflict become parties in a common conflict and during the mediation focus is first of all on the process of bringing the parties in dialog with each other. It is all about finding solutions which the parties can agree upon – not about who is the guilty one. The pupils can ask for mediation themselves but the class teacher, the teachers of the class, and teachers on playground duty also have the obligation to urge the pupils to enter mediation with a conflict.
Changes in the view of conflicts
Principal Jeanne Jacobsen sees that adults and children at Sjællandsgades Skole have changed their view of conflicts significantly. The greatest benefits that the school has gained via the changed view of conflicts are:
- The adults are more open towards conflicts, they involve each other and the tone has changed
- That the adults and the children are proud of the fact that Sjællandsgades Skole is a safe Nørrebro-school, where all the parents of the neighbour-hood dare to send their children to school
- That among the children it has become legal to tell about it when something happens that they do not like – earlier this was equal to being an informer
- That the children are proud of the fact that mediation is offered at their school. This provides the children with a feeling of being worth something, and this is in classes with almost 100% bilingual children
- What has required an extensive effort has among other things been getting the adults to deliver the cases to the mediators and to get the adult mediators to deliver the cases to the peer mediators, says Principal Jeanne Jacobsen.
A situation of mediation begins
”Most pupils are on their way to the next lesson in the class but two pupils from the 5th grade are going in the opposite direction – to the peer mediation room where they are going to mediate in a conflict between two pupils from the 3rd grade. The two rather puzzled girls from 3rd grade are welcomed and they confirm that they are here voluntarily on their own wish. The peer mediators explain that they are bound to secrecy and therefore nothing of what the girls are going to tell will leave the room. Before the mediation itself begins, the girls promise to observe the four rules of peer mediation: To listen to each other. To talk nicely. To tell the truth. To talk one at a time.”
Peer mediation in every day life
Since 2004, peer mediation has been part of the every day life at Sjællandsgades Skole. Pupils from 0th to 7th grade can attend peer mediation, while pupils from 8th to 9th grade can be mediated by an adult.
- We would like to give the pupils joint responsibility in solving conflicts in order to have a nice way of talking and a good atmosphere at the school. All pupils must thrive at the school and like being here. Originally, the initiative arised from the understanding that children are capable of a lot of things and that they develop responsibility from being taken seriously and involved, says Jeanne Jacobsen.
What has happened? What is the problem?
”The peer mediators start asking the two girls about their conflict. One by one the girls are given the opportunity to tell their version of the conflict. What happened, how did they experience the conflict, how did they feel during and after the conflict, and then they were asked if they had any suggestions to a solution of the conflict. It is an important principle in peer mediation that no party is more right than the other. It is all about finding solutions that the parties can agree upon, not about finding out who is to blame. On the basis of this understanding, the two mediators are controlling the conversation and giving the two girls the opportunity of entering into dialog with each other.”
All the teachers of the school have attended a course in conflict resolution and this provides the teachers with a common knowledge about how to react in a conflict situation. All new teachers are attending a course in conflict resolution as well.
- Earlier the children were used to the teacher inferring and solving a conflict by determining who was the main responsible person and who had to apologize to whom. Furthermore, conflicts were regarded as unbearable and time consuming problems. Now we regard conflicts as opportunities to develop and learn, says Jeanne Jacobsen.
Suggestion to solution and the final agreement
”The two girls from 3rd grade exit the peer mediation room. They are not talking to each other when they are walking back to their class room and they do not appear to become friends within the nearest future. Nevertheless, the two peer mediators are quite satisfied with the mediation. Supervised by the mediators, the two girls have managed to sit together in the same room for half an hour and tried to talk about what happened and they have made an agreement of how to avoid similar conflicts in the future. The suggestions to solution that the girls have agreed upon have been written in an agreement which they have both signed. In two weeks, they will have a follow-up meeting where the parties will meet again and discuss whether the agreement has been fulfilled.”
Provides safety
Peer mediation is a way of providing the pupils with joint influence and hereby joint responsibility but there are other advantages as well. It provides a feeling of safety to know where to get help and it provides basis of good friendships based on respect of differences.
Bukla from 6.u. is a peer mediator and explains what happens in case of mediation between children:
- We sit down between the two persons and inform then about the four rules of mediation, which I cannot remember just now, and then we ask the children about what has happened. We ask them how they felt. And in the end, we make an agreement. The agreement includes suggestions from both of them of how they believe they can move on from here. And then the agreement is written on paper. And then we agree that they shall come back after two weeks so we can discuss how things have been.
Pupils are happy about the mediators
Mujtaba and Nadia from 6.u. are not peer mediators but they are happy about the fact that there are peer mediators at their school:
- As pupils at Sjællandsgades Skole we are happy that mediation is an opportunity at the school and we think that it has helped the school and we thank the peer mediators.
The focus on conflicts and friendships leaves its mark on the whole school, and it is obvious that it is important for the children to have friends and function well socially.
Mediation at Sjællandsgades Skole has made it obvious that children are in the possession of competences of solving a lot of their own problems if they get help from older pupils or the teachers. The children obtain a joint responsibility and influence on their every day life and the adults obtain more tools for dealing with the daily conflicts.