Peer Education Meetings Lack Enthusiasm from Educators, Peers
By Elliott August ‘08
News Staff Writer
This spring, the Choate administration kick-started a new program of peer education for day students. Manifested in informational meetings held once a week, the program is meant to inform students about important adolescent issues—such as peer-pressure and sleep deprivation. As with any school commitment, students who fail to attend the required number of meetings are assigned to Sunday detention. As a day student who so far has attended two of these meetings, I can honestly say that not only are they completely uninformative, but they are generally a waste of time.
I can see why it would seem like a decent idea to the administration to institute the meetings. Many of the issues addressed in the meetings are certainly relevant to life at Choate, and day students don’t have the chance to participate in the similar meetings held for boarding students in the dormitories.
Yet these meetings are carried out very ineffectively. Neither of the two sessions that I have attended has lasted longer than a brief five or ten minutes. During that time, the peer educators hand out a survey and mumble a few questions—to which the only response is often silence or the occasional wise crack. How are students expected to take anything—except perhaps feelings of bitterness—away from the peer educator meetings when the presentations are so sparse, and the teachers so unmotivated and poorly prepared?
Apart from its poor execution on the behalf of peer educators, the program fails to educate because its recipients simply don’t want to be educated. Day students are more or less forced to attend the meetings--not very many people are excited to attend a mandatory meeting when they could be eating dinner, sleeping, or getting their homework done. As a result, the students in attendance don’t pay close attention, and the peer educators don’t encourage them to do so. Some students avoid the sessions by convincing a friend to falsely sign them in.
In order for the new meetings to be successful, both the students and the peer educators need to make an effort to make the most of this opportunity to inform and to learn. The peer educators should realize that it reflects poorly on them when they lack enthusiasm and fail to supply any valuable information, effectively wasting everyone’s time. Peer educators should prepare more thoroughly and truly want to teach their peers. And students should recognize the importance of the issues at hand and the possibility that they might just learn something new. And to encourage student participation, the administration should offer incentives—such as an ice-cream bar or snacks—or at least some sort of compensation for the time lost. Once these changes occur, students will be more likely to give their full attention and respect to the peer educators; otherwise, the administration ought to drop this new requirement for day students.
