Awareness-raising can be an important part of developing community support for changes.  In early November, Mr. Mack took four students from Sahuaro to Amphi High School. Their purpose? To spread awareness. Students who attended were able to choose a topic of their choice and then present that topic to other students from different schools and adults. Then within their groups, they were able to go more into depth about their topic and discuss the issues.

“We each had groups, so there were 24 tables. Each one had a certain adult who specialized in their students’ topic areas. I had a doctor,”  says Julie Wolven, a senior who was one of the four students who joined on the trip. Along with the doctors were also school safety, police officers, and even people from the government. Julie decided to choose her topic on mental health.

“Metal health is such an underrated thing here at Sahuaro.” Remember those pamphlets they had posted on the walls for health issues? Julie pointed out that eventually all those pamphlets were gone. “They’re all gone. And I told the career lady about it and she didn’t even know. I’m like well that should make you guys realize that you need to know there are students at Sahuaro who go through a lot. We have school safety assemblies about internet safety but not any about mental health and how it should be taken seriously. Since we lost two students last year from suicide, it should be more of a topic here.” Julie says she’s going through things just like everyone else is and feels like people just don’t care enough. That is what inspired here to talk at Amphi High. 

Another student who went on this trip was senior, Hayden Estrella. He was offered the opportunity to go by Ms. Smith, the career and guidance counselor, which he gladly accepted. “It sounded like a really cool experience, I wanted to try it out, see how it went. I have a lot of ideas in my head and I wanted to hear other people out too.” Hayden’s group talked about college readiness in high school and some issues behind why people wouldn’t be able to go to college. Hayden also thinks that his topic is an important issue. He had a lot of ideas about it.

Both students had something they liked most about the discussions.

Hayden: “Well I really like talking, that was fun. It helped me think about the issue more in depth and listening to other people’s thoughts about it gave me more ideas, and we all kind of built and worked off of each other.”

Julie: “I think it was really cool that they actually use the information.  This was the twenty-fourth event, they do it every year and it’s just so that they can learn more about what they can improve on and hearing students’ perspective. And it was cool how we were able to talk about things, how open we were.”

As Julie said, Sahuaro does this trip every year. Maybe next year, you’ll be the one talking in a group as well.