How the pandemic is affecting Teen Council

By Ivy Merkl, Reporter

With an ever-increasing need for reproductive health education, teenage mentors have stepped in to help make sexual education more relatable and easy to understand. Teen Council, a group of high school students, has been helping teach sex education and many other topics to kids in middle and high school.

During a normal school year, Teen Council members would learn about different topics from adult advisors and then pass that information on to younger students. But as in-person teaching has complicated things, Teen Council has spent 2020 teaching online.

“This year… we’re using zoom… for our distance learning platform. We create a lesson and then we get on a meeting, and then we record that and send it to the teachers, and the teachers play it for their students,” Teen Council Advisor Maya Battisti said.

 

PLAN. Last year’s Teen Council created decorations for an event. This year, Teen Council has moved to an online version of their platform to provide healthy sex and relationship lessons to youth.

 

It can be challenging to get multiple pieces of technology working at the same time, but that is the best way Teen Council has come up with to get their teachings across. While online lessons are not the preferred method of getting information across, Teen Council members are making the online format work.

“I kind of wish it was in person… but we got to do what we got to do,” sophomore Celena Becerra said.

One main issue remains: how does one establish a connection with students so they are comfortable asking questions about such sensitive topics? With the topics Teen Council teaches, it is especially important that students feel comfortable, and can ask questions about situations that may pop up later in their lives. Teen Council has worked hard to build a connection with the students they teach in order to address this issue.

“I actually really thought it worked well, because with every lesson, it kind of flowed the same. I think it will work out pretty good,” Becerra said. 2020 and the transition to online school have been tough for everyone, but this group of passionate teens have met the challenge head on.