Six of our Magical Mediators were invited along to the Scottish Mediation Conference on Friday. It was a school trip with a difference, as we had to get two trains in order to get to Queen Margaret University, and our day started at 7:45am, some of us felt a little sleepy!

We managed to fit in some numeracy work, as we had to calculate how much money we needed at the shop, and we used our prior learning to calculate the duration until our train arrived. We bumped into Carol Hope our Peer Mediation trainer at the platform at Waverly and we got the train to Musselburgh together.

First of all we listened to a keynote from Kenneth Kressel from the Psychology of Mediation. Some of it was a litte bit difficult to understand but it allowed us to reflect on what time of mediator we are. It also was our first time in a huge lecture theatre (and university).

We then attended a workshop with Mediator Magician Nick Patel (who has worked with the famous Magician Dynamo). He reminded us of all the important skills and knowledge we need to be a mediator, while showing us some tricks. In the second workshop we discussed the challenges and solutions to peer mediation being sustainable in our schools, here we had the opportunity to share our magical mediators story and learn from other schools.

On the way home we reflected on the day, some of us thought it was ‘The best day ever!’. Our next steps are to share this event with the other magical mediators and discuss as a group how we can develop the magical mediators service. A big thank you to Roxan and Carol for inviting us to this event, and to our parents for dropping us at the train station. Miss Burton said we demonstrated excellent communication skills and that we represented MCPS in a positive way.

Roxan the  Peer Mediation Network Coordinator send an email to say:

So glad to hear your pupils enjoyed it – it was such a great, positive day! Your pupils were all so lovely, clever, motivated, and talented and it was our pleasure to have them there. Nick was also very very impressed with the peer mediators, and said it reflects very well on their teachers and trainers! The rest of the conference delegates were also delighted with the presence of the young people. Overall, it was a very happy day! Thank you so much for joining us.