New Ambassador Program helps high school teens fit in

Fear and uncertainty guide the steps of new students attending a school for the first time. For teens their first day means multiple new teachers and finding their way around an unfamiliar campus. Talking to many other teens, whose names they don’t even know, is scarier than a slasher film. And all that is magnified if they enter the school later in the academic year.

An unfamiliar scene like this, as established teens seek out their friends during the lunch hour, might greet new students trying to make a social niche for themselves at Maricopa High School.

Aware of these problems, Maricopa High School has implemented a new program this year to help ease fears and give new students entering the district a quicker, painless assimilation.

“Since we’re getting a lot of new students, the purpose is to get everybody together and make all the new kids feel really comfortable and at home – pair them up with buddies, if they don’t meet friends right away, and get them involved and informed about what clubs and sports activities we have,” commented 10th and 12th grade counselor Larissa Rzemienski.

Rzemienski and 9th and 11th grade counselor Marsie Shealey are the facilitators of the school’s Student Ambassador Program. It is open to new and old students alike, having welcomed 15 members since the school year began August 8. The club meets every Friday in room 5W at 8:30 a.m., before the school day begins.

Students will have the opportunity to learn about clubs and activities such as sports, homecoming rituals, dances and other social events. New students are also given brochures to help familiarize them with those things as well. Money raised through face painting at the Homecoming parade and other campus-based events will benefit the club and help support further social endeavors planned to “make everybody feel at home.”

Counselors are also furnishing new students with a survey to help them find positive encounters as well as “problem areas” they could be having in class, at lunch or on the bus with other students. Inquiries are also being made as to how the overall M.H.S. experience can be improved.

MHS counselor Larissa Rzemienski co-facilitates the school’s Ambassador Program with fellow counselor Marsie Shealey. The program helps make it quick and easy for new students to find friends and things to do.

“We probably have at least 400-500 new kids this year,” Rzemienski says. “So we have a ton of new kids. We’re just trying to see if there’s anything in common among the new kids, and if they’re experiencing some of the same problems. If they’re not making friends, we’re trying to pair them up with somebody in the club already, who’s maybe close to their age, to eat lunch with them – that kind of stuff.”

A peer mediation group is also in the works, so that trained students can help other students solve their on-campus conflicts.

For more information on the program, contact the facilitators in the guidance office, via email at [email protected] and [email protected] or phone Rzemienski at (520)568-8107.