Students Helping Students Helping School Improve High School Principal Swears By Programs That Invite Older Kids To Lead, Younger Ones To Connect

It’s working.

Although the Freshman Connection program is only in its second year, Coeur d’Alene High Principal Steve Casey is convinced it’s helping students stay on the straight and narrow.

“Our incidence of truancy is down, violent confrontation is down, our school climate is up,” he said Wednesday at a training session on school safety and discipline.

More than 30 secondary school teachers, administrators and counselors from throughout North Idaho gathered to talk about drugs, gangs, fights, graffiti - all the signs that kids are struggling.

The educators shared strategies for dealing with those problems. Elementary school staff members did the same thing on Tuesday.

The sessions were sponsored by the Idaho Department of Education and paid for with federal money.

Casey said his own awareness of kids’ social problems was heightened a few years ago following a fight in the school parking lot. He’d faced the situation hundreds of times, but this fight was different.

“I found out the next day that all of the kids involved were packing guns,” the principal said. “That scared the daylight out of me.”

Since then, Coeur d’Alene and Lake City high schools have begun a variety of coordinated efforts designed to reach students at all grade levels.

Freshman Connection began as a way to make ninth-graders feel a part of their schools, and feel a link with older students. Over three days, divided into three groups of 120 or so, they spend time talking with 15 seniors who can serve as role models. They talk about avoiding drugs.

“They’ve got to be kids who say, ‘This is how to survive,”’ said substance abuse coordinator Norm Mahoney. “They’re beautiful. They just knock your socks off when they start talking to the younger kids.”

The chief of police, school board members and other adults participate in the discussions, too. It’s great to see them sitting in a circle on the gym floor, talking with kids, Casey said.

The educators stressed that it’s important to include every student in the program, even if they do so grudgingly.

“The kids who don’t participate are the ones who need to be there the most,” said counselor Warren Olson.

The idea of connecting with the school is important, he said, especially when so many families are new to the community and don’t have a generational link to the building.

“The kids I deal with in the counseling office aren’t connected; they’re often kids who move from school to school,” Olson said.

When Coeur d’Alene students are sophomores, they take part in the Natural Helpers program. It pairs them with older students who teach learning and listening skills.

Natural Helpers has been around, said Casey, but it fell by the wayside. It has come back with the help of cigarette tax money set aside for drug education.

Next year, the two schools will begin using juniors as “peer mediators,” helping younger students resolve conflict.

By the time kids are seniors, Mahoney said, they’re expected to give something back to their younger classmates.

“We want to use seniors in more and more creative ways, maybe put them in the counseling center,” said Mahoney.

The effort to reach all the kids every year isn’t complete, he said. “It’s still half a vision. We’re working on it.”

, DataTimes