Home | About this site | Lesson Plans | Student Training | Adult & College | Downloads |Site Support | About us Home | About this site | Lesson Plans | Student Training | Adult & College | Downloads |Site Support | About usFor whatever reason, you have the task of getting peer mediators trained and on duty for your school. This page is dedicated to helping the visitor prepare to do just that. Email us with questions, whenever! You are at the Presenter's Guide Page, currently, and the information here applies to the workbook pages as well as getting your workshop going with a "hook" and some other preliminaries. The links can be reached from other areas of this site, but are arranged here for the presenter's ease of "flow." If you are new to mediation, but have been trained to work in schools, you have the skills necessary to do this mediation thing. We just re constellate what you may already know into a form that we call mediation, and then act like we're really important. There is a lot of information here. Use what you need and disregard the rest. "A" course in mediation means just that. It is one of several approaches to the core requirement of mediation in it's true sense, the sense of healing. An approach that does not involve healing is some other method of resolution.
As a former school administrator involved, at times, with curriculum development, one of my tasks involved the alignment of curriculum elements within a course framework, for example. In simpler terms it meant striving to make certain that things fit together as much as possible. This site's content is designed with the curriculum alignment in mind--it ALL fits together! The Conflict Management Booklet (Adult Text), Student Workbook, and Presenter's Guide ("teacher's edition") were developed together. This efficient "mix" makes the one day workshop feasible (and field tested, K-adult, already as mentioned elsewhere). "One day" is a very full day from 7:30AM - 3:45PM with breaks and lunch. The best case scenario is to conduct the workshop just before school starts, or during a student-free day when the demands of other teachers on MIT's time is not an issue.
The Student Workbook is your student "text" for this one day course with your mediators-in-training (MITs). It is can also serve you as your "teacher's edition" wherein you can write/print any helpful presentation notes to yourself from this Guide information onto the (now) blank facing blank pages for each page. Pages are printed one-side only for this purpose and for students to jot notes. We provide a lot of information for each of the Student Workbook pages via the links here. As always, you are encouraged to modify any of this information to fit your school's needs. You may wish to parse out the instruction differently.
Presenting in pairs, at least, is preferable, to solo performance, although solo can be done in a pinch with good preparation and presentation breaks. This page concludes with a very brief "content flow" overview of this workshop. The links get you the details. There is no table of contents in the Student Workbook as it's content is designed to perform the same function as the workshop moves along, page by page.
Presenters' mediation education - please read the 12 page pdf Conflict Management Booklet about three times and you're ahead of most everybody that you will be teaching.
Review the Presenter Guide information via the links below while having the low res. versions (view) of the Student Workbook available side by side by having two browser windows open if your screen permits. Please become familiar with this material.
We take the theory and practice of adult level mediation information and distill it to a one day workshop for students to begin their work as mediators. This stuff works as evidenced by a successful start of Sierra Vista JHS's program last year (2005-06) and others before that. Even if we can only convey key basic concepts and skills this day, it gets our program going for the coming year in which we as school program coordinators meet periodically with our peer mediators to discuss our experiences from time to time. The Mediation Journal, front and back, (included in the Student Workbook materials), is designed to be the "training wheels" for MITs' venture into becoming mediation process leaders. As noted elsewhere, it can be used all year or your school may wish to adopt another method which performs the same tasks. For today, all MITs get a brief exposure to each step of the mediation process. Later, in meetings and on the job, (perfect) practice will make perfect.
MIT Group Assignments
The curriculum assumes that each quad (group of four MITs) will be, as the term implies, composed of four (4) MITs. Probability theory dictates a one in four (1/4) chance of this happening in a random population sample exceeding a base number. So what do we do with the "extras"? To assure them maximum training experience, we suggest making a diad of two (2) into a triad of three (3), as needed, and as described in the next paragraph.
Triad Accommodation with Additional Students or Staff
When the mediator diad-triad team takes its turn as the role play "mediators" all write on their journals and into their workbooks and participate in asking questions or discussing elements of the mediation with the other members of the "mediator diad-triad. They are full-fledged members of the mediator team, then, who do some co mediator stuff and some recorder stuff. The model of a high profile legal team in a trial where all of the team may speak in session might be close in concept.
When the mediator diad-triad team takes its turn as role play "disputants," the "extra" MIT is simply silent and present, much like we might be watching a mediation silently to learn of the dynamics of the process. They may make notes of what they see. In our own mediator training, part of the early practicum was to simply sit aside (after being introduced to disputants as an MIT) and, with disputants' approval, observe the proceedings as we accumulated "observation" hours leading toward actual participation in future mediations.
This is not a drama class and perhaps this will minimize an already confusing role switching routine employed in this workshop. Adults present for training may (a bit awkward for MITs) be able to complete quads, also, if presenters think that training process can still occur as planned. Any student self consciousness, or authority figure issues present may preclude this strategy, however. The approachability factor within both students and adults will affect this decision. If the reader has tried another way of solving and serving the "extras" successfully, we'd like to know via email.
Workshop planning considerations
QuickLinks to Presenter Aids >> Hook | Table Placards | Standing Posters | M & Ms | MediationVideo
Name tags, or cards, and marker pens for writing names
Opening Hook equipment/supplies
3X5 feeling word cards - download this file, cut and paste word to cards.
Lunch and snacks - kids seem to enjoy pizza supplied by the ASB, as well as break time sodas and snacks--sweet and salty.
Refreshments (no M & Ms please--we use them later as a surprise) and rest rooms available and stocked if it's summer break, for example
Housekeeping logistics to begin - one hour beforehand.
Setting of room as you let MITs into the room - posters, placards, refreshments, workbooks, pencils
Each set of presenter's notes (lesson plans) at the links below contains an icon for those who may wish to print lesson plans after viewing then as html files. Any print issues can usually be fixed by adjusting "File>Page Set Up" to 90%.-95% 
Mac Safari Users: If pdf files will not open:
Open Acrobat or Adobe Reader, go to its internet preferences, and uncheck “Display PDF in browser using...”
Then go to HD/Library/Internet Plug-Ins and make sure AdobePDFViewer.plugin is not in there.
Opening hook. Helps to get MITs attention
Workbook (WB) page 1 - MITs' name, mediation poem is read.
WB page 2 - Conflict management continuum shows where mediation fits in and how.
WB page 3 - Initial interactive w/MITs to begin speaking, listening, writing, reflecting, evaluating skills
WB page 4 - Enjoy the 12.5 min. video w/o completing this page. We'll return to the video and this page at the end of the day.
WB page 5 - Role play process expectations, six steps of mediation, & iPod dispute graphic - major start!
WB page 6 - iPod dispute in writing to help explain graphic (page 5) plus get ready, get set . . . tasks.
WB page 7 - A taste of role play (I) Opening Statement, Mediation Rules) before start of theory.
WB pages 8, 9, 10+ - Active listening pages, feeling words, skills training. Includes list of feeling words handout. This section seems to take the most time in our experience. Kids naturally want to "fix" other kids' problems which defeats our goal of process in solving, and self-supervising agreements to, conflicts. Therefore, we "focus on feelings" to a great extent here in our "Question Construction Clinic."
No workbook page, Demonstration/participation - Non verbal communication (body language) using volunteers with cards, need for awareness.
WB page 11 - Open Style questions, intro and worksheet activity
WB page 12 - Resume iPod role play practicing taking notes while practicing active listening, open style questions and body language (non verbal language) awareness. (II) Initial statements are recorded.
WB page 13 - Hidden Agenda Role Play ("script" only). . . This will be used per the directions on pg. 14. Need 2 volunteers
WB page 14 - Upper half is the hidden agenda demonstration/participation using pg 13. Lower section introduces shared interest or common ground concept and its importance.
WB page 15 - Merging circles in successive venn diagrams show movement from all separate interest focus to significant shared interests.
WB page 16 - Two practice scenarios are offered to develop shared interests awareness in the midst of separate interests. Page ends with questions about the iPod dispute and shared interests involved.
WB page 17 - (III) Setting the agenda in a balanced manner using neutralizing language is the focus of this page. We develop a class consensus of two items via our "focus funnel" before moving on.
WB page 18 - Agree on the Agenda, Look at the Items and the Conflict (IV). The pair of mediators begins the application of everything we've learned so far. In actual court ordered mediations, this step takes the most time by far. From this activity, one rough solution--one relational OR one material) is selected by the quad.
WB page 19 - Look at the "Other" Item (IVcont.)and Begin toWork with Solution Ideas.
WB page 20 - Agreement Writing, Closure and Mediation Video. Conclusion of this learning/role play process includes writingagreement sentences in proper form. Each MIT writes a proper who, what, when style sentence. Closing the mediation follows with disputant signatures to the agreement and (VI) closure language spoken by each MIT.
The last training activity is to watch the mediation video again to see if MITs can answer more of the questions on MVG. The video is paused a number of times to facilitate this review and CFU.
This page: rev26April09
