Johnston said she considers the mediation program a key element in the school's effort to create a safe environment for students, and this atmosphere in turn contributes to keeping conflicts from becoming physical, or perhaps even deadly. It's not one thing, but a number of things. And my sense is that they're learning skills that they can apply later. Through mediation they have to be engaged. I'm not saying it would necessarily have stopped what happened, but there would have been a chance.
Mediation brings people to a different plane of relationship.
Ms. Johnston what goes on in the sessions. The final agreement between parties is put in writing, signed and filed for future reference. Specially trained students take on many of the potentially combative disputes, but adult volunteers come in to handle the most complex and explosive cases, said Amy. The adult volunteers, who supervise the program, are trained and dispatched to six Santa Fe schools by the New Mexico Center for Dispute Resolution. The goal of the program is not only to curtail violence, but to reduce the number of suspensions that result from it.