Building Resilient Students and Mediation Term Paper

Building Resilient Students and Mediation - Term Paper Example Resiliency is an innate quality of students. Students are different in terms of their ability to manage stress, keep focus, manage their emotions and their emotional presentations, maintain their self-esteem even in the face of difficulties, etc. The trait of resilience can be determined by a number of factors: Feeling obligated to succeed or maintain one's composure due to one's duties towards family, friends or community; high self-esteem; good stress management techniques; etc. But resilience is also a consequence of someone's environments and social networks. Anyone can snap in an environment that is high-tension, high-conflict and stress-inducing; certainly, it will tax their resources no matter how vast. Conversely, even people with very low stress tolerance can flourish in an environment that controls stress extremely well. Further, even the toughest people are likely to become depressed or stressed out if they don't have a social network to vent to and use for relaxation. Thi s means that educators in their quest to create resilient students have two goals. They have to teach students how to manage stress, but they also have to control the environments that students are in so that they don't have too much stress to manage in the first place. These two are obviously somewhat at odds with each other: Teaching students how to manage stress requires a slight bit of stress in the first place, as an inoculation. Teaching children to manage deadlines, for example, requires giving them deadlines, which can be stressful. There is also clearly a dialectical relationship between these factors. Better stress management can help people build larger networks of friends and relationships which can help with stress management, for example. Someone's innate characteristics help to influence the environment, and someone's environment can help hone, challenge or tax their innate characteristics. Mediation fits into all of this in several ways. â€Å"Peer mediation is a wo nderful and effective strategy for helping students maintain their emotional balance... [E]ducators must set the stage for conflict resolution by setting clear expectations... Teaching students the skills for managing anger... comes next... Students need to know that anger is a normal emotion† (Thomsen, 2002, p. 114). Preparing for mediation, just like mediation itself, involves teaching skills such as really listening, anger management (learning to hold one's tongue long enough to get through a stressful meeting or process that can let someone get what they want), and so forth. Thomsen recommends â€Å"allow[ing] students who are experiencing a conflict to cool off† before attempting peer mediation (Thomsen, 2002, p. 114). â€Å"Remember, the brain and body are in an aroused state, and the rational mind is waiting in the wings†. Students going through the preparation process learn that preparing for mediation, negotiation and conflict resolution is just as impor tant as the process itself. Further, mediation and the process of preparation for it helps students get in touch with their emotions. â€Å"Learning the intrapersonal skill of introspection will serve students long after graduation† (Thomsen, 2002, p. 114). Many adults don't have proper introspection skills, unable to deeply reflect on their thoughts, motivations and beliefs. This drives conflict: It is very hard for someone to avoid making others angry if they don't know their own behavior; similarly, someone trying to appease someone else is