Making Tough Decisions

The topic of discussion today was "Making Tough Decisions". While the theme was obstensibly ambiguous, the conversations that the mentors leds with the students had to do primarily to peer pressure and the use of violence to solve disputes. There were a few incidents at the school that precipitated the discussions, not to mention the fact that students are required to go through metal detectors to walk onto the campus everyday. For this discussion, we divided up the group between boys and girls. While understanding that in a PC-era separating along gender lines is generally frowned upon, the thought here is that the pressures facing boys and girls, particularly in the high school age range are vastly different. Since I cannot speak for the discussions happening in the girls' room, I'll describe generally some of what we spoke about in our session. What causes boys to "start up" with other, in particular, are they doing it for them or for the perception of them. I think a lot of fights are started because of a perceived obligation to act. The biggest fear that runs through a lot of our students' minds is that it's more important not to be a "nobody" than to stay out of trouble. That itself is a troubling thought. It's probably more the result of want to forge an identity at an age when you are still trying to figure out for yourself who you are than any malicious intent. There's a lot more to cover on this, but I'll leave it for a separate time given the late hour of this posting. I'll promise to edit this post later on.

On a side note, News12 for the Bronx did a feature today on our mentoring program. Field reporter/correspondent Diana Perez filmed a bit of the session today and interviewed mentor Brian Wong and his mentee Columbus.