Students in Mr. Seemy’s class were discussing widespread bullying and harassment at middle schools across the United States. The students believed that arguments among students were not adequately addressed, so problems tended to get worse and sometimes even caused fights on campus. Everyone agreed that something ought to be done. But what?

Aliyah and Jacky were members of the Peer Mediation Club, where they had been specially trained to work with other kids to solve conflicts amongst themselves. They believed that increasing students’ capacity to deal with problems on their own saved teachers’ time and was more likely to solve problems permanently.

“We take the time to find out the underlying reasons for the problems in our mediation meetings. Sometimes kids are arguing over the same crush, or have arguments that go back to elementary school,” said Aliyah.

Chris wasn’t so sure. “But kids take adults more seriously. Plus teachers can assign detention or other punishments, and kids can’t.”

Jacky said, “Let’s see if peer mediation is as effective as we think it is. We’ll ask everyone to take an anonymous survey and then tally the results.”

Jacky and her classmates came up with three survey questions for students to answer anonymously. Mr. Seemy had all of his classes take the survey at the beginning of class the next day.

Discussion Question:

What do you think? Based on the survey results, are student mediators more effective at solving problems? Do you think the results would be similar if a survey like this were done at your school?