Posted on 03/14/2006 1:09:44 PM PST by klossg
More than 600 students from Dolores and Montezuma counties had a first-hand look at how the choices they make affect their lives during the Fifth Annual Teen Maze at the Montezuma County Fairgrounds on Thursday and Friday.
The event began at 8 a.m. each morning, and students didn’t stop wandering through the maze until about 1 p.m. each afternoon. The purpose of the maze was to show youths that the decisions they make now have long-lasting, far-reaching effects on their lives and the lives of people around them, according to Ami Fair, Teen Maze coordinator.
This is the second consecutive year Fair has coordinated the event. The two-day activity was set up Wednesday at the fairgrounds. Eight-foot-tall metal frames, draped with red cloth, made the maze’s walls. Within the maze, students were presented with real-life situations and the real-life consequences of those actions.
“I believe if (the students) know the consequences of their actions they can make better choices,” said event volunteer Rebecca Larson.
Larson is the director of the School Community Youth Coalition, an organization dedicated to reducing substance abuse and violence among youths in Montezuma and Dolores counties.
The maze started with each student spinning the big job wheel. Based on the job on which the needle stopped, the students received a bag of money with different amounts of fake currency. The choices that spun round on the big wheel, like the bright pie pieces of the Wheel of Fortune, were skilled career, professional career, entry level career and lotto winner.
Once the students spun their way into a career, they were given a career card that had different possible jobs for each career track. After they received their salary, they began winding through the rooms of the maze, each representing a different life decision they could make. Based on the harmful activity in each room, they were penalized by having to pay for their mistakes out of the salary they received.
The maze began after the job wheel with the abstinence room.
“We start in the abstinence room because we think that’s an excellent first choice,” Fair said.
From there the students went through the peer pressure room, where foam swim floaties hung on strings extending from one maze wall to another. The yellow, green, purple and pink foam tubes hung at about head level so students had to dodge them to make it to the next portion of the maze. On each floatie, scrawled with permanent marker, were peer pressure phrases the students might face. “You’re only in high school once,” read one floatie.
From the peer pressure room, students could choose to turn left into the tobacco room or right into a substance abuse room. In the tobacco room students rolled dice. Based on the number rolled, they were penalized, monetarily, depending upon their pack-per-week habit.
Perhaps the most eye-opening room of the maze was the methamphetamine room. Pictures showing before and after mugshots of meth users hung on the walls — a display that showed the startling physical metamorphosis of meth users.
“(This) shows kids what meth physically does and how fast,” Fair said.
The other startling artifact in the room was a coffin filled with boxes of Sudafed, a gas can, Drano, acetone and tolene, the chemicals used to make meth.
“(Some people say), ‘Oh I’m just going to try it once,’ but (drug use) follows you,” volunteer Jazmyn Hampton said. “(It’s) with you the rest of your life.”
For Hampton, 17, a junior at Montezuma-Cortez High School, this issue is much more than a few pictures on a wall; it’s personal.
Hampton is motivated to share with people the very real effects of drug abuse, by her mother’s drug habit. She pointed to a picture hanging on the wall, of an apartment infected with filth, and said, “that could be my mother’s.”
“Everyone around you is going to be affected by the decision you make,” Hampton said.
For Dove Creek Middle School student Blaine Daves, 14, that lesson was driven home.
“(Drugs are) definitely not good for you,” the eighth-grader said. “It’s something that is very deadly and can affect others, not just you.”
In addition to drug, alcohol and tobacco use, students also learned about the consequences involved in being sexually active. They went through scenarios designed to show them how easy it can be to contract a sexually transmitted disease or become pregnant. That portion of the maze was particularly poignant for one seventh-grade student from Dove Creek Middle School.
“I didn’t know that stuff can happen to you,” Kyli Banks said. “One little mistake, and your life could be ruined.”
Educating students about the consequences of the choices they make is only part of what the Teen Maze is trying to accomplish.
“It’s important that we use this as a preventative, education tool,” Fair said. “That’s our main goal, to prevent and educate.”
DISCUSSION ABOUT:
"Teen Maze, Students learn dangers of drugs, drinking, abuse (sexual activity)"
This is an excellent piece!
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We now know the end consequence of liberalism's choices is ultimately human extinction.
BTTT! The teens will be attending the presentation on The Theology of the Body that our Youth Minister is doing tonight!
This actually might work. I was a young lad in the 70's. Contrary to popular opinion, the 70's, not the 60s, was the time of long hair and heavy illicit drug use - on a truly massive scale at least. (Don't believe me? Look at the high school yearbooks in virtually all of flyover country.)
Anyway, the anti-drug programs of the time iirc were well meaning, but a bit quaint and underfunded relatively speaking and were just so un-ready to deal with the demographics involved. This was a time when "authority figures" of any kind were under attack. In many ways I think the younger folks today are much better equipped to handle this issue, but who knows.
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