Mediation Week Marked Virtually at the Florida Supreme Court

To mark Mediation Week this year, the Florida Dispute Resolution Center offered a virtual training to peer mediators and their teachers from an area school.

Conflict Resolution Day—the third Thursday of October—was established to boost awareness of mediation, arbitration, conciliation, and other methods for resolving disputes creatively and civilly.  Since 2005, when this tradition started in the US, October has been a time to encourage and celebrate peaceful conflict resolution practices all across the globe.  Because mediation is the alternative dispute resolution process that Florida’s courts implement most frequently, each fall, the chief justice or the governor generally issues a proclamation promoting mediation, and the Florida Dispute Resolution Center (DRC) facilitates a mediation event for area school students studying conflict resolution skills.  Indeed, for the last 24 years, the DRC has partnered with the Florida State University Schools to provide an interactive training to students who are studying peer mediation in school.  In pre-Covid times, teachers would often bring these budding peacemakers to the state’s highest court to engage in some hands-on learning about mediation.  Naturally, the training couldn’t be in person this year, but the DRC devised a virtual workaround: altogether, 22 first through fifth graders from the Florida State University Schools, their teachers, DRC staff, and several of the staff’s school-age family members participated in the court’s Mediation Week activities via Zoom.

While walking court visitors around the rotunda, Ms Rietow shows them the Florida Supreme Court Seal; here, she explains the meaning of the court’s official motto (Sat Cito Si Recte, literally, “soon enough if done rightly”) and interprets the various symbols embodied in the seal.

This year’s virtual Mediation Week comprised a tour of the supreme court building, which included an education program, and, for the older students, a mediation training.  The virtual tour, conducted by Ms Emilie Rietow, education and information administrator for the supreme court, with the aid of Mr. Erik Robinson, supreme court archivist, gave students an opportunity to view and ask questions about the courtroom, portrait gallery, lawyer’s lounge, library, and rare book room.  Ms Rietow also took the court “visitors” on a stroll through the rotunda, pointing out the elegance of the marble pillars and dome, explaining the court’s official motto (Sat Cito Si Recte, literally, “soon enough if done rightly”) and the various symbols embodied in the Florida Supreme Court Seal, and offering what Mr. Robinson called “a visual taste of the richness of the rotunda as a ceremonial space.”

One of the stops on the virtual tour of the supreme court is the portrait gallery, which includes 86 oil paintings of Florida Supreme Court justices past and present; here, Ms Rietow shares anecdotes about some of the justices with the students.

For the first, second, and third graders, the educational portion of the tour included a discussion about the purposes and roles of the courts, the differences between trial and appellate courts, the requirements to become a justice in Florida, the duties of lawyers and judges, and the meaning of an appeal.  And with the fourth and fifth graders, Ms Rietow discussed the three branches of government, the purpose of the judicial branch, court structure in Florida, trial versus appellate courts, the types of cases handled at each level, the history and role of the Florida Supreme Court, and the five districts into which the state is divided and from which district each current justice came.  Together, they lingered over the oil paintings of 86 of the state’s justices past and present, and Ms Rietow pointed out the state’s first female justice, first African-American justice, and first justice of Hispanic descent.  (The supreme court now regularly offers 45-60-minute virtual tours, available to school groups, civic organizations, and leadership groups; follow this link for information about scheduling a tour.)

The mediation training for the fourth and fifth graders was conducted by Ms Susan Marvin, chief of the DRC, and Ms Kimberly Kosch, senior court operations consultant with the DRC.  After Ms Marvin welcomed the students and their teachers, Ms Kosch led an exchange about what mediation is and how it works.  Then Ms Marvin facilitated a conversation about what a mediator may and may not do in trying to help people find a solution to their conflict: all agreed that a mediator listens to the parties and encourages them to listen to one another; asks questions to determine each party’s position and interests; encourages creative brainstorming for possible solutions that each party can accept and agree to; and may offer impartial information.  However, everyone recognized that a mediator cannot take sides or impose resolutions—the people having the dispute are the decision-makers, not the mediator—and, at all times, the mediator must remain neutral and unbiased.

After this warm-up, Ms Marvin offered a hypothetical for the students to ponder and deliberate: two young siblings are given an iPad by their parents, who tell them to share it, but both siblings want the iPad all the time and are unable to work out a compromise on their own; their parents send them to a mediator.  At this point, the students were asked to imagine themselves as the mediator and to answer some specific questions about how they would conduct the mediation; they were also invited to come up with some of their own solutions for sharing the iPad and offered some very inspired responses.

Taking the process one step further, Ms Marvin asked the following: what if these siblings—or any parties in a mediation—hurt one another’s feelings before they reached a solution?  What can the parties do to become friendly again?  She then led the students in an interactive exercise on the process for making an effective apology.  The session concluded with some observations about how mediation makes a difference in people’s lives and how it makes for a more peaceful world.

The principal goal of peer mediation is to teach students how to resolve disputes harmoniously in their schools.  But it has a far-reaching goal as well.  Through practicing mediation skills, these young people are learning how to listen to others respectfully and how to express themselves civilly, in ways that are not demeaning to others.  They are also learning relationship-building techniques and strategies for developing creative solutions with others—skills they can use with everyone: family, friends, teachers, and anyone else their paths cross.  In short, in learning dispute resolution skills, they are also learning how to be kinder, more engaged, more responsive human beings.  (Take this link to learn more about mediation and alternative dispute resolution in Florida.)