HUNTINGTON BEACH : Students Giving Peace a Chance

Most people will go out of their way to avoid fights, but not 9-year-old Salvador Aguayo. He seeks them out.

But Salvador doesn’t start arguments--he ends them. Armed with nothing more than a pencil, a clipboard and a gentle demeanor, he helps keep the peace on the playground of James W. Franklin Elementary School by negotiating truces.

Salvador is one of the school’s “conflict managers,” a corps of 20 red-shirted students who are part cop, part psychologist, trained to get students to solve their problems by talking instead of hitting. Since the conflict management program began in October, the student mediators, all from fourth, fifth and sixth grades, have negotiated peaceful ends to more than 120 disputes.

The mediators have become well-respected by their peers, and most students will now go to them before seeking help from a teacher. Although that is partly because teachers are sometimes too busy to take long periods of time to quell disputes, Salvador says there’s a more important reason students come to them.

“They do it because they want to solve their problems. They want to be friends,” he said.

The mediators, who have no authority to discipline other students, are all bilingual and work in pairs during recess and lunch. They write reports of each incident, usually arguments over playground equipment, pushing and shoving or name-calling. For example, one terse report filed on March 3 states, “Michael keeped pushing Bo in the mud. Finally Bo got sick of it and punched Michael.”

The conflict managers receive more than 17 hours of training from fifth-grade teacher Laurie Anderson, who started the program, before they begin patrolling the playground. They learn interviewing techniques and how to recognize emotions and encourage cooperation.

One recent incident that Salvador and a partner mediated involved boys arguing after one threw a rubber ball at the other. Michael Dawson, 12, who threw the ball, said it was an accident. John McDonnell, also 12, who was hit in the face, said he wasn’t sure.

“I don’t know if it was an accident or on purpose, but he cut my lip,” McDonnell said.

After asking permission from both boys to help resolve the dispute, Salvador laid down the rules for negotiations--don’t interrupt each other, no name-calling, be honest and try to solve the problem.

Each boy gave his side of the story, and, prompted by the mediators, offered suggestions on how they could avoid the problem in the future. Michael promised not to throw the ball carelessly, and moments later the boys were shaking hands.

Later, John praised the peer mediators and said that without them, “We might have gotten into a fight.” He also said that there have been noticeably fewer problems on the playground since the program began.

“It’s been calmer. We haven’t had a fight here in a long time. They didn’t happen very often before--maybe once a month. Now we don’t have any,” John said.

Although teachers still handle serious disputes and physical fights, the student mediators are important because in many cases problems get solved for good, Anderson said.

Conflict manager Ross DeRosier, 11, said the training is also valuable outside the school. He said he recently settled an off-campus fight between two friends that threatened to come to blows.

“It makes you feel sort of good. It’s fun and it makes you feel good when you solve a conflict.”