Everyone has a role in students’ lives, whether it’s a teacher, a friend or a parent. A specific group of students devote their time to solving conflicts and making school a safe environment: peer mediators. They attend trainings, set up showcases, raise money for charities and establish ground rules in a dispute. They practice keeping things confidential and professional while achieving what is considered a successful mediation. They try to model mature ways to solve disagreements by negotiating solutions.

“Our main goal is to stop a problem before it gets to administration, before it gets physical or violent and before it hurts someone else,” senior peer mediator Megan Durell said.

Business and Personal Law teacher Gail Yax oversees the program.

“On a regular day we would go in and talk to Ms. Yax,” senior peer mediator Will Johansson said. “Normally she gives us assignments to do. We will typically have a couple mediators walk through the lunches and make sure that nobody is sitting alone and that there aren’t any issues.”

Mediators also run annual fundraisers throughout the school year, most prominently during the holidays.

“Even if it may not look like it, we make MLK videos, set up the showcase, go around to teachers,” Johansson said. “Teachers come to us if they need help with anything, and we just do odd jobs that wouldn’t get done if we weren’t there.”

Every mediator needs to fill out a form in order to accomplish a successful mediation.

“The form says if the mediation was satisfactory or if it wasn’t,” Durell said “I would probably say 95 percent to 100 percent of the mediations were satisfactory.”

Mediators are offered four different periods during the day to take peer mediation as a class.

“Ms. Yax does a really good job of giving us mediations by making sure it gets solved that hour; she just cuts to the chase,” Durell said. “She wants to know the problem and then we solve it.”

Peer mediators also go on retreats and take trips.