It does a body good to get out of the office, and even out of the San Gabriel Valley, from time to time.

And since the office for me these days, as for so many journalists, is the dining room table, it’s especially nice to hit the road and meet some new people.

But I still like to keep my connections to the home turf, which is what I care most about in my work. So it was kismet on that score when it was the Pasadena-based Western Justice Center inviting me to a student-mentoring event in Downtown Los Angeles at the California Endowment, and it was a small group of students from the El Monte City School District I would be observing, and giving a bit of journalistic advice to.

Alexia, Arlo and Carter didn’t really need much advice as they interviewed and videotaped students from around the Los Angeles area about what they had learned during the WJC’s conflict-resolution and peer-mediation training. They were incredible. They were pros. They are in middle school, and yet totally ready for prime time. They are all super smart, and well-trained as well. Nice combination. Impressive.

The WJC, based in the Maxwell House, one of those historic buildings near the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals on South Grand Avenue — the former Vista del Arroyo Hotel in Pasadena’s Golden Age — was hired by the El Monte schools to develop “practices designed to restore relationships among students, giving them tools to build bonds and conflict resolution.” EMCSD is the third local district-wide partnership for WJC after the Azusa schools and Pasadena Unified.

The WJC, which more locals should know about, has a mission of offering “an antidote to the divisions gripping our nation. We equip young people (and the adults who support them) with the tools to embrace their differences, manage conflict, reduce violence and navigate complex problems in order to positively affect their future — and ours. We invite students to reimagine their classrooms as peacemaking spaces, to see themselves in places the world tells them they do not belong, and to own their power as leaders.”

If that all sounds pie-in-the-sky in this world in which the actual leader of this nation berates the leader of another nation on national TV in some kind of mean-spirited sport, well, I was blown away by how well the peer mediation training actually worked.

Our trio interviewed students from a San Fernando Valley charter school. “Why do you think peer mediation is so effective in defusing conflict?” Carter asked. “Because we get two people in a conflict to agree in the end to peacefully exchange converstation,” a middle-schooler replied. “I think it’s effective because instead of immediately starting screaming and getting angry and accusing someone of something, we have learned to work with more steps that get us deeper into the problem and understand what both people did — so that we don’t do it again.”

“What are some qualities in yourself that you have developed as a peer mediator?”

“I am more calm and don’t immediately start screaming myself” — here the little girl laughed — “at other people such as my sister when I disagree with them.”

“What effect has being a peer mediator had on your own life outside school?”

“I’ve learned how to have better a relationship with someone, because I was able to apologize, and feel as if a weight had been lifted off my shoulders, because now I can talk to that person and not have an argument, or feel stressed.”

If the kids can do it, why can’t we?

Wednesday at random

A couple of weeks ago I made light of Pasadena City Hall designating the Elks Club on West Colorado as a historic site, since on its bland Colonial exterior it looks nothing like any other Myron Hunt design. Boy, was I wrong. The Elks’ Exalted Ruler invited the community in for Mayor Victor Gordo’s State of the City address, and the interior is not only gorgeous — it feels important. The Craftsman-beamed high-ceilinged ballroom is one of the great spaces in Southern California. The mayor gave an impassioned, upbeat speech to a community — a packed house — still reeling from the Eaton fire. Big tributes to our firefighters and the day laborers who came to our aid. Plus: Elks have a full bar! Can we make it the permanent State of the City site?

Write the public editor at lwilson@scng.com