I was excited about the numerous success stories from schools implementing peer mediation and would love to try this first in my classroom.   The biggest barrier to doing this school wide would be selling it to my principal.  We just recently purchased flags for our "Fight Free" program.  Our school is now a preK to 4 school.  The techniques of the trained mediator would be difficult to teach younger students.  We could train only our fourth graders to be mediators, though, helping to give them a feeling of school ownership. The Beginner's Guide to Mediation, "The Process" is an informative site that gives step by step procedures to follow when starting peer mediation.  This site suggests that mediations are done in the heat of the moment, "at an intense feeling level".  Most of my problems occur on the playground during lunch recess.  This means that to begin this process we would need to first spend time and money training staff.  We would then need to find available time to train the students and then have to find a way to have students available during lunch recess to handle any disputes.  We would also have to educate our students about the process and incorporate mediation techniques into our school rules.  Margaret Beeks Elementary School solved the training students issue by having student athletes from a local university train with the elementary students and help mentor the program.  This would help eliminate extra duties for teachers.  We could train our students during summer break if we could find the money to do so.  As I was searching online for peer mediation training in Illinois, I was surprised to come across my daughter's school.  They have been using a peer mediation since 1995, their site does not discuss their success of the program.  I did find a workshop, in Springfield, that charges about $120.00 a day per person.  Teachers in our district are given two paid professional days a year to further their education.  Interested teachers could use a professional day to pay for their training.(conflict resolution/peer mediation)  As far as students being available during lunch recess, we would need to train enough students so that we could rotate students to minimize time spent away from class.  Each fourth grade teacher could recommend 4 students to be trained giving our school 16 student mediators. Since I am a SAP member for our district I will be discussing the possibilities of implementing a peer mediation program with my team members.
 
 

References:

Beginner's Guide to Mediation, "The Process"

Conflict resolution/peer mediation

Numerous mediation success stories