Grantham Peer Mediation Team Visits DRC

Oct 25, 2012 Leticia Fehling Business/Community, District, Frontpage, Grantham Academy, MacArthur Area, School News 0

Grantham Middle School’s Peer Mediation team comprised of 12 eighth graders visited the Dispute Resolution Center (DRC) in Harris County on October 18. The center is a nonprofit organization that provides services free of charge to residents.

The students learned about the qualifications and training needed to be a mediator. They also learned that mediation is a process that can be used to resolve a number of different types of disputes. Students also discovered that there are different types of mediation used based on the type of relationship the disputing parties are involved in, as well as the type of dispute they may be having.

Afterwards, Judge Josefina M. Rendón, who currently serves on the board of the DRC, invited the group to visit the Harris County Civil Courthouse. Judge Rendón showed them her courtroom and took the students on a personal tour of her office.

Judge Rendón, who was one of the county’s first Hispanic women attorneys in 1977, became the judge of the 165th District Court on January 1, 2009. She was also the first woman to serve as Civil Service Commissioner for the City of Houston (1981-1983). In 1993, she also became a mediator and mediated legal disputes predominantly in the family, employment and personal injury law areas.

In 2011, Judge Rendón received both the Justice Frank Evans Award and the Susanne Adams Award. Each award is given annually to persons who have performed exceptional and outstanding efforts in promoting or furthering the use of mediation and who set an example for the rest of the mediation community in Texas to follow.

In the featured image, Judge Rendón (far left) is pictured along with Grantham’s Peer Mediation Team and counselor/sponsor Rita Hernández (far right).