Cases such as these strengthen the resolve of Central Middle School teachers Ginger Angstadt and Ellen Thompson, who want to teach youngsters how to control anger and to resolve conflicts peacefully. If we could catch students now and change the way they deal with each other, how they communicate, how they resolve disputes, then maybe they won t get to that stage.
Middle school is the perfect time to intervene.
Indeed, the peer mediation program at Central Middle in Dover appears to be having significant results. Referrals for discipline were down 55 percent during the three-month period last spring in which peer mediation was used. While Angstadt doesn t claim the peer mediation program deserves all the credit for the decrease, she believes its effect reaches beyond the 57 students involved directly in mediation sessions as mediators or disputants. As students learn more effective ways to handle conflict, they begin to apply those skills to all of their relationships. The benefits ripple throughout the school.