PEER SOLUTIONS

WASILLA – Just listen.

Listen and help guide Valley youth toward a positive, productive future.

That’s the main message a panel of five local teenagers told a room full of staff from Valley social service agencies and nonprofits brought together for a United Way of Mat-Su Summit on Education, Income and Health April 20 at the Mat-Su Public Safety Building off Lucille Street.

“Just listen to us,” Anthony Phillips, a home-schooled student attending Colony High School next year, said at the end of the daylong event. “I don’t want to sound like a little kid, but it makes me mad when someone doesn’t listen to me. It’s like I’m spilling my guts and you’re just sitting there looking into space. We know that kids whose parents don’t talk to them are more likely to fall into drugs and tobacco and drinking. Listening would help a lot.”

And that’s just what about 50 people from youth services agencies, senior centers, schools, medical centers and other organizations did during the panel discussion.

They listened and asked questions of Phillips, Palmer High students Madison Mitchell and Lars Shepard-Weber, Valley Pathways student Jessica Tremaine and Mat-Su Day School student Clancy Shepard-Weber.

Most of the teens said they see a need for more mentors in the schools and more resources to prepare them for college and applying for scholarships.

“As a senior I’m facing being kicked out of the nest and being kicked out into the big ocean, and I’m faced with all this pressure to get a job or go to college, so I need more support for getting on the right track,” said Tremaine, a member of the Mat-Su Substance Abuse Coalition who hopes to study early childhood development and psychology. “I wished I’d had more guidance over the years so that I could have done more volunteer hours for scholarships, for instance. We just need to learn to take more baby steps along the way.”

For Phillips — a member of the Teens Against Tobacco Use group who dresses as “Captain Oxygen” at times to campaign against second-hand smoke — bullying in schools is a major concern.

He said he was recently bullied by students and a teacher and sees it happening to others all the time.

“There’s so much bullying going on it’s not even funny,” said Phillips, a tenor sax player who won a full-ride scholarship to Julliard’s Summer Youth Program this year. “We could probably go over to the skateboard park right now and one kid’s probably getting beat up for his hairstyle or his jeans or his shoes.”

Phillips said he thinks having more counselors and help lines in the schools would help reduce bullying behaviors.

“Maybe they could talk to kids who were recently bullied and get a group started like ‘Teens Against Bullying’ or something like that,” he said.

Tremaine said she loves that Valley Pathways serves as a second family — or even first family for some — because many of the students there need positive adults in their lives and the school offers that crucial connection to the adult world.

“The social norm out there that there’s nothing to do here is wrong,” she said. “There are a lot of opportunities out there, but the biggest thing is awareness. Awareness is always the first step.”

Mitchell said she’s involved in a peer-mentoring program through her school’s National Honor Society that serves as a way for successful students to help those who are struggling. The program helps students find healthy activities and volunteer opportunities in the community.

She also enjoys participating in Youth Court, she said, and working as an intern at the Public Defender Agency. Both activities have helped her realize she could have a career in law.

“John Richards at the Public Defender’s Office has been really inspirational to me,” she said. “He’s showing me a lot about teamwork and he’s talked to me a lot about college.”

Finding those key mentors to lead the way is crucial, they all agreed.

For Clancy Shepard-Weber, just watching others goes a long way toward helping him find the right path.

“I live by a phrase: You do more with your eyes than with your mouth,” he said. “I do a lot of observing.”

His brother, Lars, passed around the room a collection of likes, dislikes and needs gathered on large sheets of paper from his PHS classmates earlier in the day.

On the papers, students said more than once that there wasn’t anything to do in the Valley and that there needs to be more activities for youth.

The panelists just shook their heads.

“I think this community has done a great job of providing opportunities for young people,” Mitchell said. “We just need to get out there and figure out what’s available to us.”

Contact K.T. McKee at kate.mckee@frontiersman.com or 352-2252.