C.A. Gray Junior High School hosts Teen Maze
MOULTRIE, Ga. – Colquitt county students are stepping into a brighter future with Teen Maze.
C.A. Gray Junior High School recently hosted the Teen Maze, an interactive, life-size simulation designed to help students navigate real-life challenges.
“What I like about the teen maze is the different parts. It tells you everything that you need to know about, like pregnancy, STDs. And, I like how they described it to us and something that shocked me was about the social media. Like everything that gets posted on social media, even if you delete it or not, it still will always be there forever,” said Fremoria Funder, student, C.A. Gray Junior High School.
“Teen Maze is an opportunity for us to get community involvement to come into the school? And, we have so many outsourced resources into one building and also that gives our students a real life experience about the choices that they make now, at this age, as a pre-teen or teenager, and how it can affect them long term,” said Ishia Dawson, Assistant Principal, C.A. Gray Junior High School.
The program featured various booths addressing issues such as teen pregnancy, substance abuse, gang involvement, mental health, career planning college preparation, and teen accidents.
“We’re introducing the teens of C.A. Gray to our teen mentor program, which is exposes teen girls to things pertaining to teen pregnancy. Building their confidence, their character. The world is constantly changing and our youth are struggling, especially in our community. So, making sure that the teen girls feel confident about themselves. I think it’s very important that they learn how to navigate the world today and know what their resources are,” said Michele Smith, founder of Teens Have Vision 2, non-profit.
Students were presented with scenarios and asked to make decisions at each booth, which led to additional scenarios based on their choices. Upon completing the Teen Maze, participants graduated from with the program with enhanced knowledge of the consequences of their decisions.
“Teen Maze has been in Colquitt county for years and we have tried to evolve as situations in teen’s life has evolved because we want them to know that these things that they face every day does have life consequences that can follow them from things they put on social media to getting to a fight at school and getting charged with a misdemeanor and all of those things. And, so, we have community partners. There’s over 24 community partners invested in putting this on. But, we also have 10 to 20 sponsors who help underwrite and finance this. So, the Teen Maze is really to show the kids who are going to be our future leaders that we care about them now,” said Vicki Colls, Teen Maze Chair & Clinical Mental Health Counselor.
De’Andra Jacobs reporting.
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