Notes From Mediator Training
The Los Angeles District Attorney's office has a mediator training program, and I was one of 30 people chosen for it (out of 600 applicants).

It's an absolutely amazing opportunity. We've spent three days at a firehouse in Watts, in the community room, learning and role-playing mediation skills and techniques from these incredible trainers (who are themselves mediators in the DA's office).

Wednesday afternoon, I was one of a group of five mediation trainess given the task of writing up the "Agreement" portion of mediation. They gave us a story -- a sort of slightly hip version of Goldilocks the housebreaker. The other character ("BB," in my shorthand here) was Baby Bear.

I wrote up our summation solutions the parties (GL and BB) had verbally come to on the sheet we were given. An important point: They were to be written in the language of the parties involved (GL and BB) and not go beyond what they expressed or be in substantially different langauge.

Oh, and this is harder than you think it is or it sounds.

Here's my group's sheet -- a giant Post-It stuck up on a wall:

We got applause from our trainers.

Oh, and the cool thing is, in working collaboratively like we are, you learn a lot from other people's solutions.

Finally, the biggest misconception I had about mediation before I started was that the mediator solves people's problems. The mediator is actually an impartial, neutral facilitator to help the two people come to their own solutions together. I'm learning -- and we're all learning -- the ways to help them do that.

So fucking cool. I'm completely grateful and thrilled to be included.