When students have disputes at West Middle School they will be able to turn to other students.
The school is implementing a peer mediation program.

Eighth-grader Bethany Lockhart, one of the students selected to serve as a mediator, said she looks forward to helping others resolve their conflicts.

“I just don’t like fighting,” she said.

Teacher Sharon Kuchinski, who has been helping to train the student mediators, said the program will help resolve conflicts that arise from things such as rumors spread at school or borrowed classroom materials that aren’t returned.

She said the problems may not seem like a big deal to some people.

“But for kids in middle school, these are huge problems,” she said.

Kuchinski said she hopes the program will encourage students not to use physical aggression.
She said administrators and teachers can request that students meet with peer mediators.

“And students can come to us,” Kuchinski said.

She said a peer mediation session will never result in a punishment.

She said the mediation generally will result in some type of an apology and a promise of how an issue will be handled differently in the future.

“It’s helping them to solve their problems,” Kuchinski said.

School Counselor Cindy Scircle said West Middle School previously had a peer mediation program but it hadn’t been used for some time.

Kuchinski said 19 seventh- and eighth-graders were selected to serve as mediators in the new program.

They were chosen from a group of students at the school known as Eagle Ambassadors.

The selected students have been training for about six weeks. Kuchinski said they soon will be ready to serve as mediators.

She said the mediators will work in pairs, and there always will be an adult supervisor.

“We have teachers coming on board to be our supervisors,” she said.

Kuchinski said mediators will read rules at the beginning of each session. She said participants will not be permitted to put down others.