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Maria Kaylor
Ramsay Fulbright | WCPO
WCPO Cincinnati
How a University of Cincinnati program is empowering local teens to address the opioid crisis
'I like to do what I can to make a difference'
By: Lucy May
Jun 04, 2019
CINCINNATI — Maria Kaylor has watched family members struggle with substance abuse.
So when the 17-year-old had the opportunity to help develop new ways to address the opioid crisis, she jumped at the chance.
“I’m not a person that likes to just stand back and look at things
falling apart. I like to do what I can to make a difference,” said
Maria, a junior at Princeton High School. “I’m a believer that if you
aren’t trying to help solve the problem, then you’re becoming part of
it.”
Her opportunity to help came through Youth Built Change, a student-led
research initiative overseen by faculty and graduate students at the
University of Cincinnati and funded by a National Institutes for Health
grant.
Students involved in the work just completed the first year of what will be a five-year project.
“It’s basically the idea that, in order to use research to actually
make a difference in the world, we have to do research with people
instead of on people,” said Farrah Jacquez, an associate professor in
UC’s psychology department and the project’s faculty leader. “Their
lived experience is really what’s going to help us solve problems.”
High school juniors might seem young to tackle such a serious community
problem, but many of the student researchers were like Maria. Their own
lived experiences made them passionate about the work.
“When I was seven, I was adopted because my parents were addicted to
substances,” said Jerrell Francisco, a 17-year-old junior at Princeton
High School. “I really wanted to have an opportunity to change that.”
Even more students at Manchester High School, the other local school
taking part in the project, had direct experience that drove their
interest, Jacquez said. Not involving them in the work does not protect
them from the problem.
“At Manchester, it’s like I know about this because my dad overdosed or
because my mom is currently in prison,” she said. “They know exactly
what’s happening because they see it all around them all the time.”
Starting the pipeline earlier
Students at both schools were selected for the initiative before the end of their sophomore years.
The project launched with an explanation at UC and a chance to spend
the night on campus in May of 2018. As soon as this past school year
began, UC graduate students Alicia Boards and Alice Deters began
traveling to the two schools each week to help the students and their
teachers through the process.
It was a huge change from any standard high school curriculum, said
Rebecca Heckman, who taught the class at Princeton High School.
“With state testing and everything else that we deal with as teachers,
our curriculums are pretty set. There’s this and this and this,” said
Heckman, the science department chair at Princeton. “This was a moving
target, and the kids were deciding what they were going to do. I gave
them very little direction.”
The class was like nothing else Heckman had ever done in her 30 years as a teacher, she said.
“It was interesting to help them realize we don’t know the right answer,” she said. “You have to go research it.”
Boards and Deters, who are both working toward PhDs in educational
studies, said the project isn’t only about helping teachers and their
students approach learning in a different way.
It’s also about helping students learn how they can have an impact through research, even at a young age.
“It’s a way to start the pipeline earlier and a way to increase youth
activism and voice,” Boards said. “Now they can see themselves being
able to do research that matters.”
The fact that the students’ research was grounded in their own experience makes it all the more meaningful, Deters added.
“It’s incredibly brave that they’re able to own that experience and use
these research skills they’re developing to actually do something about
it,” she said.
One of the student teams at Princeton High School surveyed middle
school students to get a sense for when they started to become aware of
drugs in the community.
Seeing consequences that adults missed
Maria and Jerrell's group researched how to better reconnect recovering addicts with the community.
“We found out that, people that are addicted to substances, there is no
real solution to fix them,” Jerrell said. “The solution we came up with
was just rehab. We need to figure out a way to get them there.”
The students thought it would be a good idea to create an organization
to help people get into rehab by giving each person a sponsor and
providing financial support when necessary, Maria said.
Princeton junior Sharon Ramires said her team focused on surveying
sophomores to figure out how prevalent peer pressure was when it came
to trying drugs or using them.
“They don’t feel it’s discussed enough at school,” she said.
The Princeton students will present their findings at a school board meeting in August, Jacquez said.
The Manchester students presented findings to their school board on May 8 and already are making a difference.
One of the student teams there researched the impact of a Manchester
Local Schools policy of drug testing students who participate in
after-school activities.
“It has affected our sports teams majorly because we used to be really
good, and now we’re not,” Elisa Brown, a Manchester High School junior
explained during a presentation about the research at UC last month.
The team surveyed 174 of the high school’s 255 students and found that
some had stopped participating in after-school activities because of
the policy.
“Our hope is that our school will find a way to help our students and
keep them away from drugs,” Manchester junior Jalyn Thacker said of the
group’s research.
Manchester High chemistry and biology teacher Brittnee Inman said she
was impressed by the students’ initiative and professionalism, and so
were school district leaders.
“It’s not like they just wanted to say ‘stop the drug testing.’ They
wanted to prove that maybe it’s not so effective,” said Inman, who
supervised the Manchester students’ work. “It does cost money, and
we’re struggling as a district with finances due to the local power
plant’s closing.”
The power of listening
The Manchester High students asked district leaders whether they would
re-examine the drug testing policy over the summer, and several school
board members were receptive to the idea, she said.
It was a result the students didn’t expect when they began the project.
“Almost every single one of them said, 'At the beginning, I felt like,
what can I do? I’m just a high school student. Nobody is going to
listen to us,'” Inman said. “But by the end, I think they saw they were
getting the community involved.”
Several high school seniors at each school will serve as peer leaders
to help guide the juniors who will work on the second year of the
five-year project.
Jacquez said she hopes having those older students who have experience with the class will be helpful to the new group.
“I’m hoping that it makes things feel less scary,” she said. “This year they definitely felt like guinea pigs.”
One of the biggest lessons this first group of student researchers learned was the importance of listening, Deters said.
“I think that’s what a lot of research in general, even at our level
and beyond, misses,” she said. “We don’t really listen to the people
that we’re trying to help.”
They also have seen how they can be effective community activists, even as teenagers, Boards said.
“If we can start 16-year-olds and 17-year-olds feeling like they can
make a difference, I think long-term, that’s how we’re going to shift
the way in which the world operates and our communities thrive and
succeed,” she said. “And we get out of this whole deficit and all these
barriers to communities but we actually see the positive and the good
that our communities can have for generations to come.”
More information about Youth Built Change is available online.
Read this and osther articles at WCPO Cincinnati
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