One of the most terrifying feelings of high school is feeling completely alone and having no one there to walk through the halls with you, giggle with you in the backs of classrooms or eat a hearty lunch of Cup of Noodles with you. Isolation and alienation are two aspects that seniors Cheryl Surdyk, Greta Melendez and Katie Thibodeau and junior Spencer Hurwitz combat on the CHS campus through their work in Peer Support. With truly noble and selfless reasons for their actions, these officers of Peer Support work behind the scenes of CHS, taking time out of their own classes to talk to students in need.
The students of Peer Support are a part of the group for different reasons, but they all seem to have the same goal: helping students feel at home at CHS.
“The goal of Peer Support is to make CHS welcoming and make students feel that they belong here, not that they are outcasts,” said Surdyk. “We really push Peer Support to its maximum potential to create a support system.”
This year, Peer Support members have organized the anti-bullying assembly and homeroom program, the lunchtime group Friends and have helped with the gun violence rally. This past month they also created a Peer Support request form in the counseling office, along with an Ask.fm, Facebook page and a new website. Additionally, by running Coyote Connect, they make the transition to high school smoother and easier for freshmen and new students.
These students’ dedication to make school more welcoming and less isolating is evident through their daily effort to make people feel less alone.
“We encourage all of our members of Peer Support to, if they see a person sitting alone on campus, invite them to go sit with our members,” said Surdyk. “We do whatever we can to make sure that they feel included.”
Peer Support wants students to realize that bullying is not what as cliched as what occurs in movies and that it does truly happen on our campus. Bullying is no longer shoving people into trash cans but is something much scarier and more psychological than that.
“Bullying is a broad term,” said Hurwitz. “It can be anything from teasing someone’s ugly sweater to alienating someone because of their sexual orientation.”
Friends, the new club run by Peer Support, now has its own classroom in room H117 for students to come and eat lunch or talk to one of the peer counselors on Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.
No matter what problems students face, there are caring students on campus who are here to listen–students who may have once gone through the same situation. Peer Support makes sure no one is ever alone. These dedicated students are the support system that every kid who has ever been in high school wishes he or she had.
