Issues change: So should approaches

Let’s get something straight: The school administration’s heart is in the right place with programs like Eaton 101 and Red Ribbon Week and their efforts are to be applauded.

Yet these programs fail to address the heavy and difficult topics that teens have been dealing with, don’t provide the solutions to solve rapidly growing epidemics and issues.
Kids literally have been skipping and/or leaving class to vape in the bathrooms. And only now, after far too much time has passed, the administration has taken steps to prevent an already widespread epidemic of drug abuse…by posting simple public service messages on posters outside the bathroom doors.

Something more is needed.

A recent report from the CDC has found that Colorado leads 37 states in teen vaping use. Nationally, out of 1300 students surveyed, 25.7% said they didn’t realize that they were inhaling anything more than flavoring.

Every generation has its own issues, but according to Psychology Today, the average high schooler has the same stress levels as a psychiatric patient of the 1950s. Times have changed and health issues should shift to include mental health as well. Eaton’s school administration should adapt to the issues directly facing their current classes.
Events like Red Ribbon week and the safe driving presentation in the spring are good, but these approaches, especially compared with the actual severity of the issue, seem redundant or rather tame, and students at Eaton High School are left unprepared for the darker and often unspoken villains of modern teens.

Eaton 101 is essential to the freshman experience–Excellence, Awareness, Tenacity, Ownership, and Noteworthiness are all noble goals. But upperclassmen have no programs like Eaton 101 for dealing with actual struggles. The issues directly facing current classes are being overlooked by staff and administrators.

We should be having assemblies on the tough topics, such as drug abuse, suicide, domestic abuse, depression, and anxiety, to make them more approachable.

Students are depressed, students struggle with anxiety and drug abuse. Kids are killing themselves in Greeley, but all the freshmen get is a safe driving assembly every year.

In order to address these difficult issues, they must first be approached. Eaton 101 is a beneficial program for the freshman but there needs to be similar programs available to the rest of the school.
Principal Tapia’s Student Advisory Council is a step in the right direction, but further actions to support the rest of the students need to be taken to ensure student success in school and beyond.
More education is needed to address the issues relevant to today’s high school students.