STUDENTS LEAD PEACEKEEPING
By Zain Shauk

Glendale News Press
October 14, 2008 10:09 PM PDT
CA

Toll Middle School eases racial strife by enlisting group to ensure
everyone is getting along.

GLENDALE — Tensions between Armenians and Latinos were rising, and
eighth-grader David Monzon was sure that a "rumble" was on the horizon.

But before the 2007-08 school year was over at Toll Middle School,
the climate changed.

Administrators had strategically selected a group of students who
had exhibited on-campus leadership, good or bad, and asked them to
take on roles as student peace leaders.

"The bottom line is: Kids were bored," Principal Paula Nelson said
of the school, where many students are first exposed to gangs. "They
needed to be told, you’re high achievers and you need to be involved
in positive things."

"And it didn’t take much to make them realize that ‘Yeah, we should,’"
Nelson said.

Toll’s peace leaders meet with teachers to think of solutions for the
campus’ problems with division. They discuss measures for preventing
bullying and controlling impulses of anger, while also meeting with
younger students in a club setting and collaborating to encourage
participation in on-campus activities, like lunchtime basketball
tournaments or after-school drum corps.

The school’s peace leaders were only one part of an ongoing
problem-solving process that even involved structural changes to
prevent an atmosphere of division, Nelson said.

Now, 13-year-old David said, interracial violence at Toll seems
unlikely.

"This year, nothing like that is happening," said David, who is Latino
and one of the school’s peace leaders.

"We talked," David said. "We want peace."

The peace-leader concept, along with other changes, was part of
an effort started in 2007 by then-new Principal Nelson to root out
causes of tension and violence at the school and ultimately change
its climate.

The school worked with its community to create focus groups and a
collaborative effort to delve into what Nelson called a "history
of interracial conflict" and to explore solutions. This year, Toll
also received a five-year $500,000 grant from the state for a School
Community Violence Prevention program that would help implement new
ideas for what had turned out to be a generational problem.

After starting a dialogue with teachers and community members, many of
whom were former students, Nelson discovered a territorial mentality
among former students related to well-known campus locations known
as "corners." Many of the Latino former students, it turned out,
had congregated in their own "corner" as did many of the Armenian
students, dividing the campus and setting a precedent that had been
passed down by siblings.

"I realized that it’s really part of the community consciousness," said
Nelson, adding that former students looked back fondly on some memories
involving racial clashes. "They almost talk about this nostalgically."

The discovery led to physical changes in Toll’s landscape.

Large concrete tables now lie on a covered-cement eating area,
which was previously full of benches and standing room, ripe for
congregating and crowding into corners. Another area, formerly known
as "round table," after the round tables that had been there, has
now been converted into a driveway, without seating.

Yet another source of tension, which had been a table where some
Latino students had isolated themselves, has now been replaced by
vending machines.

"It really made a big difference," David said.

Peace leaders said the idea of unity was a big part of the solution.

"Last year, there was a lot of fights, and this year there are
no fights," said eighth-grader Lesly Gamboa, 13, who is a peace
leader. "And that’s because of the peace leaders."

Nelson admitted that many of the peace leaders had been "on the
fringe of being involved" in gangs and fights and may not have been
traditional choices for leadership roles.

But she said they had been noticed by teachers and administrators as
being leaders and were given positive roles.

Lesly said being a peace leader was an important responsibility.

"You don’t follow the crowd," she said. "They crowd follows you,
and you do good things."