THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, June 6, 1995 TAG: 9506060262
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY JON GLASS, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: Medium: 100 lines
They were only 13 and 14 years old, but nearly all of them seemed to know of classmates who had tried drugs and were having sex, including a few friends who had gotten pregnant or were infected by sexually transmitted diseases.
Others had confronted violence and prejudice just because of their skin color or the way they looked.
The Northside Middle School eighth-graders said teenagers face these problems every day, often without the support they need from parents.
``I think there should be a class parents can take to help them realize that their kids do make mistakes and are going to try things and experiment, but that they should try to respect their kids,'' said Jarrod Shuman, 14, one of about 100 Northside students who participated Monday in a teen forum to search for solutions.
``If parents don't listen to their children's opinions, they're going to rebel,'' Shuman said.
The need to improve communication between teenagers and their parents emerged as a consistent theme during the daylong conference - held as part of the school's ``Community of Caring'' program, which stresses the importance of caring, trust, respect, responsibility and family.
Sometimes, said Hector Reyes, 14, teens have to be brave enough to ask their parents to talk frankly about sex and the other problems teens face today.
``If your parents don't talk to you, you should go talk to them - sit them down and ask them,'' Hector said.
School officials set up the forum to engage the kids in problem-solving and to show them that they are responsible for their own actions.
``If we're not preparing them to help solve these problems, we're not doing our jobs,'' said Gentry Kidd, a Northside English teacher and coordinator of the program. ``The job of education is to turn out productive students and to teach them to solve societal issues.''
During the forum, many students took microphone in hand and spoke openly about their views on prejudice, violence, premarital sex and drug use.
``I'm a virgin and I plan on staying that way until I find somebody special in my life,'' said one 14-year-old boy.
Another student who said he was of mixed race asked for an end to prejudice: ``You see white women with black men and black women with white men. Love is of no season or color.''
Theo Reynolds, a sophomore at Norfolk State University who helped lead the sessions, told students of a 19-year-old cousin who recently was shot to death.
``Try to think before you pull that trigger,'' he said. ``You kill your own species and pretty soon there'll be none of us left on this planet.''
Felicia L. Ganther, a Norfolk State graduate who moderated a rap session, led the students through several awareness exercises. She had them confront prejudice by asking them to profile whites, blacks, Asians and Hispanics by relying on typical stereotypes of the races.
``It gets students talking who ordinarily wouldn't be talking to each other on a day-to-day basis,'' Ganther said. ``Now they have bonds they can build on. It kills a lot of perceptions that they have about each other.''
Ganther illustrated how the AIDS virus can spread through a community by lining up the kids and assigning them make-believe names, each of them part of a chain of people who had participated in unprotected sex.
``The best way not to catch AIDS is what? To abstain,'' Ganther said. ``You can wait until you're older. Take the time to think about it because it's serious.''
And whether parents want to admit it or not, kids are having sex and trying drugs and alcohol at ever younger ages, students said.
Out of 24 students in one eighth-grade class at Northside, 17 said in a survey that they had used drugs or alcohol, said Heather Lambert, 13.
``There's no real way for parents to say, `Hey, don't do drugs,' because it's really up to yourself,'' Erica Wright, 13, said.
``What parents need to do is trust their kids to tell the truth,'' Lambert said. MEMO: RECOMMENDATIONS
Northside Middle students came up with ideas Monday to help solve four
of the biggest problems facing teens: violence, drug and alcohol abuse,
prejudice and teenage pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases.
Below are some of their solutions:
Think before you act.
Be mature and handle yourself properly.
Consider school uniforms as a way to eliminate prejudice due to
appearance.
Encourage positive peer pressure to influence proper behavior.
Allow school nurses to distribute condoms to prevent unprotected
sex.
Hold more teen forums.
Create support groups for teens and parents.
Tighten up school security, including more searches, to reduce drug
abuse.
Improve law enforcement to cut drug abuse.
ILLUSTRATION: Color photo by MARTIN SMITH-RODDEN, Staff
Michael Cooper, 16, of Granby High School helps with a discussion
about drug and alcohol abuse at the teen forum.
KEYWORDS: TEENAGERS by CNB