WASILLA -- P.J. Cockrell got into some trouble this summer.
"I was doing drugs, and I started drinking a lot and robbing people," he said.
He was eventually arrested and spent four days in jail before being released on probation.
Though his time behind bars was brief, the 18-year-old Valley Pathways student says the experience was enough to scare him straight. He now uses that experience in his school's Peer Helpers program to help his fellow classmates avoid a similar fate.
Peer Helpers is designed to encourage peer leadership among teens in schools and the community. It's offered in high schools across the Matanuska-Susitna Borough School District through a partnership between the School District, Mat-Su Health Services, the Alaska Department of Health and Social Services Division of Behavioral Health and the Mat-Su Boys and Girls Club.
Cockrell shared his summer experiences with Peer Helpers groups from other Valley high schools last week at a two-day districtwide training conference held at Meier Lake.
"I don't want other people to start doing that stuff because my life is pretty messed up right now, and it can be messed up for the rest of my life," Cockrell said.
Warning other students of the dangers of substance abuse is a big component of the Peer Helpers program.
The two-day training included time for planning drug-free messages and activities that the groups will take into local elementary and middle schools later this month during Red Ribbon Week, a nationwide drug-abuse prevention program.
ANTI-TOBACCO MESSAGE
The students also learned about TATU, or Teens Against Tobacco Use, a program sponsored by Alaska Family Services that uses teens to help their peers steer clear of smoking. Many Peer Helpers groups participate in TATU, taking smoke-free messages into the middle schools as well.
"What we want to do is to take the talent, the energy and the influence young people have to set a positive influence within their schools. They serve as positive role models from all types of groups," said Jim Holen, the districtwide Peer Helpers coordinator and a counselor with Mat-Su Services.
Serving as role models benefits the teen mentors in Peer Helpers as well, said Deb Haynes, a Wasilla High School teacher and Peer Helpers adviser.
"For a lot of kids it's an opportunity to turn their lives around," Haynes said.
That's the way Travis Wilkerson, 17, a student at Burchell High School, sees it.
"I moved up to Alaska to be drug-free, so Peer Helpers helps," he said.
Though he has had a couple slip-ups in the year since he first arrived in the Valley from Michigan, Wilkerson says he now feels a sense of responsibility that helps him stay straight.
"It's kind of a leadership thing," he said.
But preventing substance abuse is just one aspect of the Peer Helpers program, Haynes said.
"We know the adults in the building are not going to be the ones kids go to when they are hurting. Kids are going to find out about it first," she said. "Peer Helpers is about equipping those kids with the skills to help when necessary."
Last week's training conference featured presentations from an array of social service organizations on topics ranging from suicide, depression and anxiety to sexual assault, sexually transmitted diseases and reproductive health.
The students learned how to recognize when a peer is in crisis and how to intervene and connect them with caring adults or appropriate community resources.
ONGOING TRAINING
In many schools, the Peer Helpers training doesn't end with the districtwide conference.
Groups at Burchell and Wasilla, for example, participate in classroom discussions and activities year-round that help build trust and equip students with the confidence to put their training to use.
Those efforts work, according to Rachel Snow, a senior at Wasilla. Snow says she learned of peer helping through an elective class that Haynes teaches, advanced human relations.
Like many other students, she says a sense of good will rather than personal adversity drew her to the Peer Helpers program.
"I've had a really good life. I've been really blessed, so I haven't really had a lot that I've needed help with. But I want to help others," she said.
She did last year when a friend confided in her about another friend who was planning to commit suicide.
"I wasn't supposed to know about it, and I felt really stuck," Snow said. "But I had learned that it would be OK and it was more important to break that trust to save his life."
Haynes and Holen credit Peer Helpers with preventing or thwarting many suicide attempts in the program's 20-year history in the Valley. But many of the teens' lesser efforts make a difference as well, they say.
"Some of their outreach to new students, for example, on the face of it is not a major crisis intervention," Holen said. "But it's a small step to making the school a welcoming place."
Find Becky Stoppa online at adn.com/contact/bstoppa or call 352-6708.
