When you walk inside a conference room, you hear silence as you’re faced to face with students who have gotten in a confrontation. The sound of the pen clicking, bouncing legs, sizzling stares and unspoken words. Fair, Truth, Peace. Elise Bertsche holds the power of a strong Peer Mediator. Elise Bertsche, Senior at West Leyden High School, has been a Peer Mediator since her sophomore year. Peer Mediators are students who help others shown in an altercation. Us meditators do our best to come with a solution that will better help each other.  She is a bright student who seeks to help those resolve a problem. “I, like, learned about what the program was, I hadn’t heard about it before, so it was just really cool to see something new. I had no clue it was a thing, and it’s really awesome that Leyden does this. It’s like a really good resource for kids. And I was just excited to be a part of something that could help people.”  Elise explains as she was first recruited as a mediator. Elise is a proud young woman who knows how to share her experiences and knows how to involve others. The power in her voice shows she is serious about caring for others. Senior Elise Bertsche said, with a huge smile growing on her face  “I guess, just like the tools to help other people as like the leaders in the sessions. It’s really good to, you know, work through issues and just be able to help others is a really strong skill.  I feel like you’re a little nervous because it’s kind of like the responsibility is on you. You’re supposed to kind of act like the adult in the situation. So it can be, like, a little nerve wracking to be, like, I have to be the one to figure it out. But it’s really intuitive, like, once you get into it, it’s not as daunting as it seems.” This club started off with a couple of students but soon expanded to anyone who can join the club. We meet every Tuesday after school and it is a free welcome club! Helping others can be a good or bad thing. Helping others can have different outcomes but what’s important is how people take in advice and how they compromise with themselves/their own emotions. As we tend to help others, they don’t necessarily listen to what we have to say, it feels as if you “you can only do so much you know you can. Like, people always say, like, you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make them drink it. So it’s kind of like you’re just giving your best interest and your best opinion. And if it doesn’t work out like that, it kind of just has to be okay with that” states Elise. Becoming a peer mediator, members tend to take turns when they have to go in with students who have had confrontations and/or referrals. Some members from previous years have experienced being face to face with students  while others have not. As Elise approaches these kinds of situations she tends to “remind myself that no matter my own opinions on the situation, I have to keep both parties in mind, and even if in my head there’s like a clear right and wrong, I have to try and hear out both sides and just be as unbiased as possible.” Elise likes to keep herself reminded that at the end of the day she can only say so much when it comes to figuring out a solution for students. It doesn’t come out of her, but has to come out of others. At the end of the day that is okay with whatever direction students go. In the real world, “it’s always deeper than you think. There’s always way more perspectives to look at than you think, and everyone can think of things in slightly different ways. So it’s important to just consider other people’s feelings, as basic as that seems, but like, there’s really always more to the story” she expresses strongly. Elise comes to terms with herself that “there’s just always room to grow. There’s always room to, like, learn more. And what I may think is like, a right and a wrong, it’s never that like cut and dry. It’s never that simple.” It’s never easy having to give advice to others. It can be challenging for many. However, with the gain of trust and being a good listener, Elise seems to have everything under control with her bright beaming smile. Eyes glowing and speaking profoundly, Elise sees Peer Mediations being “naturally to me, and I think that the students feel safer when talking with someone their age, instead of like a dean or like some like older figure that has some sort of like power over them, I feel like it’s like a really comfortable space.” As senior year is coming close to an end, Elise Bertsche knows the true definition of being a strong peer mediator. It isn’t about who’s right or wrong. Elise is there to compromise, share, be fair, be respectful and most importantly be a peace-maker. She wishes to still see this club grow even after graduation because she knows that this club is more than just solving problems for others. She sees it as value, importance, and growth.