Police drop charges against Pacsi

By Kristen Garrett
Herald Staff Writer

Fourth- and fifth-grade students in the Sharon City School District spent Monday and Tuesday learning how to help fellow students solve problems without violence.

Project PEACE (Peaceful Endings through Attorneys, Children and Educators) was unveiled in January and is taught in 11 schools in Pennsylvania. It’s sponsored through a partnership of Attorney General Mike Fisher and the Pennsylvania Bar Association.

Local students met David Trevaskis, one of the program’s instructors. He’s executive director of the Temple-Law, Education and Participation program at Temple University Beasley School of Law in Philadelphia.

Trevaskis goes to schools and works with teachers, guidance counselors and students to teach them peer mediation.

Peer mediators are trained in their fourth- and fifth-grade years to be mediators for the next school year, said Mindy Anderson, guidance counselor for West Hill and Musser Elementary Schools. Each year a new fourth-grade class will be trained to take over for the outgoing sixth-graders. Students from all three elementary schools participated in the training at West Hill. Kelly Roys, guidance counselor at Case Avenue Elementary, said the training went well and the students came up with a lot of good ideas and responses to problems.

Mrs. Anderson said the students will be able to mediate minor conflicts between students in school. During the two-day training session, students were given example conflicts and each student took a turn being mediators and disputants.

Colette Williams, a fifth-grader at Case Avenue, said she and her fellow students are learning techniques to help them in their everyday lives. She said she believes what they are learning will be useful and will help them do the right thing when it comes to resolving conflicts and helping others.

“It’s a good way for kids to stop the violence that’s in our schools and help kids with problems,” Leshawn Day, a fifth-grader at Musser, said.

Throughout the training, the students learned that as a mediator one doesn’t take sides or give advice, they simple listen and keep the discussions fair and as “honest as possible,” Trevaskis said.

The students also learned that peer mediation is something that must be done voluntarily. Trevaskis told the students before practicing mediation they must explain what they would like to do and how they would like to help.

Trevaskis said Project PEACE will be taught in more schools next year. He said the program was started by the Indiana Attorney General’s Office and bar association.

Pennsylvania is the second state to offer this type of peer mediation training to elementary schools. It was created here in response to the Columbine High School tragedy in April 1999.

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