Continuously serving Kosciusko County since 1854
NORTH MANCHESTER - At Manchester High School, it's called LIFE. For the past nine years, students have been "Living In Full Effect" and helping their peers make positive choices.
"It's a peer leader group that helps peers and students try to make the school a better place," sponsor and MHS guidance counselor Dave Owens said.
This is Owens' ninth year as a sponsor for LIFE. "Other faculty members have been involved with some of the activities of the group," Owens said. High school guidance counselor Terri Denney, Angie Briner and MHS biology teacher Jabin Burnworth are some of those who help with LIFE. Owens said LIFE is a team effort by both faculty and students.
LIFE comprises students in grades 10 through 12 at MHS. The students are nominated for LIFE by faculty, current members or themselves. Owens narrows down the list of nominees to approximately 40 students that will make up the LIFE group.
Owens said membership approval is based on "their potential for leadership and willingness to actively become involved in school-wide programs." He said the number of interested students usually exceeds the number of spots allotted for the group, so LIFE often has alternates "because there's more students nominated than we can take."
"Members of the group each year pledge to be role models in their school and to make positive choices for themselves and others," Owens said. "(These are) students who are interested in making this pledge and working to make a difference in the school system."
Of the 40 LIFE members elected, 27 recently participated in what Owens and many members call "the highlight of the year."
The group traveled to Taylor University Sept. 10 and 11 to participate in a ropes challenge course, "Escape To Reality." This is LIFE's fourth year participating in this course.
The ETR course is designed to encourage and challenge students and provides learning by doing, self-discovery and exposure to a safe learning environment. Activities combine mental and physical challenges to develop "the whole person, both as an individual and as a group member."
The ropes course includes both ground and low initiatives and high initiatives, which take place 20 to 35 feet above ground. During the course, students expand the skills of team building, problem-solving, communication, decision-making, conflict management, risk-taking, cooperation and trust.
"It's a really good experience for kids," Owens said. "Courses are a good way for students to overcome their fears and learn to trust others."
Besides the challenge courses, Owens said, students also participate in sharing sessions where they're "able to let their guards down and be themselves."
"I really think its the highlight of the year," Owens said. "What you hope is that the kids will come back and not only have a better understanding of each other but themselves and take some of these things and show others."
Owens said LIFE helps break down cliques in the high school, supports and helps students and adds school spirit.
But ETR is not the only activity LIFE members participate in. The group also focuses on needs of the school.
Owens said LIFE is not really a counseling group, but "the students listen and try to help their peers make positive choices. It's a support network for each other. That's a need here that no one else can really do."
Students in LIFE put on a skit called "Celebrate Life" at the junior high, which includes a mock funeral; conduct Red Ribbon Week role plays at the elementary schools; incorporate anti-tobacco programs; participate in high school orientation and transition for eighth-graders entering high school; and implement activities during prom week, such as setting up a mock crash to encourage safety and discourage drinking on prom night.
"They're good role models," Owens said of LIFE students. "They pledge to make healthy decisions."
He said he doesn't expect perfection, but he does expect LIFE students to make positive choices and refrain from doing things that could get them in trouble.
"The group as a whole over the past nine years has definitely made a positive impact in the lives of students," Owens said. "The kids feel really strongly about the group."
He said training LIFE students to counsel peers is a possibility for the future. "I think we're really going to try to do more than that." Owens said he also hopes the LIFE group will turn into a class.
"It would be really nice if we had a class and could be trained as peer counselors and mediators," Owens said. The group also hopes to serve as mentors or big brothers and sisters to the junior high this year.
"If you don't have that personal power, you're going to find it somewhere," Owens said. "Kids get bombarded with a lot of negative messages and we try to bombard them with positive ones."
If LIFE students see friends "starting to take risks and go down the road of destruction," whether it be through alcohol, drugs, violence or another form, LIFE students step in and try to help their friends make the right choice, Owens said. "You just can't measure some of the impact the group has. It's hard for them because they don't know if they're making a difference."
The students who attend this trip indicate they have developed an enhanced confidence in decision making, communication, problem solving, trust, self-esteem and working with diverse groups of people," Owens said.
For more information on the ETR course, or to arrange a tour, call Christy Ellis, ETR coordinator, at 765-998-5379.
