Waterville teens learn the ropes of conflict resolution

WATERVILLE — The conflicts that teen-agers deal with every day have not changed. It’s how they resolve conflicts that has changed, according to Eric Haley, principal at Waterville High School.

Haley and his administrative staff took special steps two weeks ago to diffuse a brewing conflict between two factions at the school. The approach put 16 teen-agers on the ropes in The Forks to climb out of their escalating disagreements.

Their destination was Northern Outdoors resort and the Learning with Adventure program.

Haley is convinced that without some intervention the disagreements would have led to violence. It may never be known how violent, but too many of the young people involved were accustomed to solving their differences with their fists, he said. Weapons have not been a problem at the Waterville school, but Haley believes that it could happen anytime, anywhere.

“It only takes one,” he said.

Annually, Waterville High School has sent seniors to the Northern Outdoors resort as part of a special focus day. The resort, best known for its white-water rafting trips, offers a variety of programs under the heading Learning with Adventure. Designed for teen-agers, the program promotes trust, problem-solving and communication skills through a ropes and obstacle course.

“You can’t do the course alone,” said one participant. “We had to get along. You have to work together.”

Together, they got all 16 members over a 14-foot wall. They learned that planning saves time — and pain. They learned their schoolmates had fewer differences and more similarities. Students who daily eyed each other as adversaries found out their would-be opponents were “pretty cool.”

“Starting out that day, I was pretty disappointed. I had the most disrespectful, rude bunch of teen-agers possible,” Haley said. “but something very, very powerful went on up there. By the end of the day, they didn’t want it to end. Now it’s our challenge to keep it going.”

On Friday, the group’s members gathered again to discuss what they gained from the experience and how they wanted it to continue. None of the participants were identified to maintain anonymity. Yet no one was without an opinion.

For one member of the group, the experience on the ropes course was a revelation.

“I learned to use my judgment skills and good mentality rather than my fists,” said one 17-year-old.

Moving to Waterville from an urban area, the young man relayed many violent experiences that he and his “homeboys” would decide how to resolve. That resolution usually meant a fight, something he can now admit frightened him.

“If you learn to work together on a problem, there is no problem,” he said. “The whole world is messed up like that.”

He also said the experience was the first time anyone had shown him he was worth anything — someone believed he could stay out of trouble.

Since returning from the Northern Outdoors course, many of the group members have tried out their new conflict-resolution skills. They learned that cross words or a misunderstood bump or comment do not always warrant an angry reaction. They also learned that classmates often “fuel” a situation with rumors and criticisms that, if investigated and discussed, aren’t as serious, or factual, as they might be. It’s the lack of communication that causes problems to escalate, they said.

The group was defensive of its new skills. A critical letter written to a local newspaper about the money ($500) said wasted on their trip earned their criticism in return.

“What do they want? A school where everybody resorts to fighting?” one asked. “Everyone at this school needs to learn to get along. A lot of people don’t have a clue what this trip was about.”

Reaching the nonbelievers and the ill-informed is the next goal. As they work out the possibilities of creating a peer mediation group, they envision a method of helping classmates work out problems through communication and not physical conflict or fighting words.

Paying attention to the problems gets results, Haley said, but it is also how that attention is focused that makes a positive result. The students involved in continuing conflicts have never learned mature skills to deal with conflict. They either lack a stable home life or an appropriate adult role model to focus their conflict in a positive way. The conflicts at the Waterville school didn’t warrant the reaction the students had, but it was an example of their immaturity, Haley said.

“Their reactions can be so immature, but the tools they use aren’t,” he said, displaying a clenched fist. “And that’s why you see kids with guns.”