This past summer, through a partnership with the Mountain Dispute Settlement Center, 20 percent of the faculty at Smoky Mountain received advanced instruction in peer mediation strategies. The faculty then developed a program tailored to meet needs of the students.
"These efforts have reaped great benefits," said assistant principal Wanda Fernandez, who is in charge of the program.
Eighteen juniors and seniors have been trained as peer mediators. Nominated by other teens, as well as teachers, the 18 completed a rigorous interview selection process before they began their even more intense training with Matthew Rave of the Dispute Settlement Center.
During training they learned the importance of peer mediation in solving conflicts, strategies for helping others control anger and methods for developing mutual agreements between students who have experienced conflict.
Peer mediator Cara Reid, a junior and a member of the settlement center advisory board, said, "I was so excited when I learned about this program. My career goal is be a psychologist. I'm not the type of person to tell people what to do, but I am the type to help them work it out."
Walsh said the program "connected to me on a deep level. I have a strong belief that each moment we should be trying to help others."
Senior Michael Francum admitted a lot of students at school have problems. "They feel more comfortable working out their problems with someone their own age," he said.
Fernandez acts as the in-take counselor, referring students to mediation. Referrals can come from a friend, from a teacher, as a self-referral or as a step in during a fight.
"The mediation room can seem really small at first," Walsh said. Even the positioning of the disputing students is important. They are placed where they face each other, but are not so close they could reach out and strike each other.
"In training we learn communication techniques like how to break down the fronts people put up," she said. "We also learn to identify body language, like who's willing to give ground."
In a role playing scenario only, since everything behind the closed mediation doors is confidential, two male students, Keith and Jason, come into the mediation room because they were fighting over the same girl. That fight initiates with the misguided rumor such of "Hey, Jason, I saw your girlfriend walking to the car with Keith, and she was all over him."
But when Keith and Jason sit facing each other, Keith explains how he was helping Jason's girlfriend carry her cumbersome science project to the car.
"Yeah, well, I heard you both left together," Jason shot back at Keith.
"I left in my own car for an honors course I take at Western. I've been doing that at the same time all semester. As for your girlfriend, I think she said something about a dentist appointment," Keith responded.
Rather than flying fists fueled by onlookers, in the calm of the mediation room, both Keith and Jason describe their version of what happened.
"It's amazing what a little communication can do to stop a conflict," said junior Blake Fox, who described the mediator's role. "Our function is to help the disputants work out their own conflicts - they are the ones who do the talking. We act as a guide, not a judge, during the brainstorming session, but the disputants have to come up with their own solutions."
Fernandez said she has noticed a decrease in the number of fights since the program was initiated. "It's too soon for us to have statistics, but at Swain County - where they've been doing it longer - they've documented a significant drop in fighting at school."
The mediation skills they've learned help these peer mediators in real life, too.
"The other day two of my friends were on the verge of fighting, and I just stepped in and said, 'Hey, what's the problem here?'" said Fox.
"Getting students to talk, to open up rather than fight, really helps our school... it makes it safer, and I think that strengthens our community," said junior Lindsey Lewis.
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Herald photo by Rose Hooper