Students of Pomona Unified high schools meet to brainstorm solutions to campus concerns
POMONA - For 240 high school peer counselors, Tuesday morning was a time to brainstorm and come up with plans to address problems such as violence and sexual harassment.
The students gathered at the Cal Poly Pomona Bronco Student Center for the Pomona Peer Resources annual leadership retreat.
The teens discussed issues of concern on their campuses and ways to make improvements.
Students focused on four general areas:
- School safety.
- Class instruction.
- Human relations.
- Peer services.
Under those areas students looked for approaches to dealing with a wide variety of concerns from drug use and gangs to teen pregnancy and sexual harassment.
Pomona High School junior Samuel Russell IV, who attended a workshop on school safety, said his group was concerned that school rivalries can cross a line that goes from young people supporting their school to trying to start fights with their opponents.
Students on his team, which included youth from different Pomona Unified high school campuses, came up with ideas that included organizing lunch time assemblies to talk "about violence with ourselves and our schools," he said.
Finding solutions to the different issues "is definitely a challenge but we have people from different schools here," Samuel said. "We're all here and I like (that) we're all mixed up getting different ideas" to address student concerns.
Garey High senior Jessica Franco, her cousin, Victor Franco, a Garey junior, and Trayvon Booker, Garey High's student body vice president, were part of a team focusing on sexual harassment.
Students often don't realize sexual harassment involves more than touching, Victor said.
Trayvon said sometimes boys will make comments to girls intended to be compliments but it comes across as harassment.
"A lot of people don't know what the true identity of sexual harassment is," Victor said.
Through an education campaign that includes fliers, posters and class discussions the matter can be addressed so that both boys and girls learn harassment can include verbal remarks and much more, students said.
Part of addressing the topic includes letting students know where they can go if they are being sexually harassed and what the protocol is for handling such a matter, Victor said.
"If we get a group of peer counselors together they can talk about it" with students, Jessica said. "That way (students) understand better."
Done right, students can shine a light on the topic and make a permanent impact, Trayvon said.
The peer counselors will take the plans they developed Tuesday and further refine them at their schools and proceed to implement them, said Mike Russo, a counselor with Pomona Peer Resources.
Every school will have two or three plans they will implement in the coming weeks, Russo said.
"They created plans that are realistic, specific and simple," he said.
After the student planning sessions, a few adults who stopped in to encourage the students addressed them as a large group. Among those in attendance were Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Daniel Lopez and interim Superintendent Richard Martinez.
"I thank you in advance for the leaders you are going to be and the leaders you are now," Martinez said.
With more support from students such as those taking part in Tuesday's leadership retreat a greater impact would be made in the lives of students who don't always make the right choices in life, he said.
More involvement from students such as those involved in peer counseling "might make a difference in your friends lives," he said.
This program is helping many people understand the meaning of words like sexual harassment etc.
I think the peer counselors from every school should atten an other group meeting on many other different subjects. We can also do many different groups at school. like girl talk boy circle etc.