Need to enrich ourselves everyday and learn new things: Archana Shrivastava
In continuation of the series of workshops being conducted by Gandhi Smriti and Darshan Samiti (GSDS) on “Peer Mediation”, a workshop was organized in association with East Point School, Vasundhara on June 9, 2021. About 89 students and faculty members took part in the workshop that was conducted by Dr. Vedabhyas Kundu, Programme Officer, GSDS.
Delivering her welcome address on behalf of the school, Principal East Point School, Smt. Archana Shrivastava spoke of the association of the school with GSDS and hoped that this association continues. She underlined the gravity of building relationship and understanding between the students, the teachers and the parents and laid importance on the need of mediators in the schools for handling various conflicting situations.
She further stressed that learning gives experience and said that there is a need to enrich ourselves and learn new things and further hoped that students can help in redressing of many of their own grievances through mutual dialogue.
The interactive session, led by Dr. Vedabhyas Kundu saw an overwhelming response from the participants such s Akansha Shukla (VII-A); Vanshita Singh (VIII-B); Khushi Singh (XI-B); Kakul Awana (VIII-C); Shivangi Aggarwal (XI-C); Tanmay Aggarwal and others who gave very good indicators on mediation.
While students like Dipankar Roy Choudhury spoke on empathy and mutual understanding, which they said are important factors for resolving conflicts; for Gauri Menon, conflicts can be resolved by what she termed ‘communication restoration’.
There were others like Vaibhavi Shah, Suprito Ghosh or Amit Pal uncovered the root causes of their disputes and decided on fair ways of resolving a conflict. They said that more than once, students often get “judged” and “sentenced” by people much older than them and said that the role of ‘peer mediation’ seeks to change that. Ayush Thakur highlighted the key characters of student mediators. Mr. Amit Pal spoke on independent thinking and no biasness on the part of the student mediators as one of the characteristics.
Echoing their sentiment, Dr. Vedabhyas Kundu emphasized on key factors of ‘trust’, ‘importance of listening’, and ‘believing in each other’. He said that a peer mediator is not a disciplinarian, a boss, a judge or a gossip monger.
Ms. Mettilda Jose and Ms. Kapila spoke on various situations they face in their schools and understanding the perceptions of students, their parents is an essential element which they have to regularly deal with. They further emphasized on the need for persistent effort and personal dialogues which have helped in mediation and avoidance of conflicts from aggravating.