Gilroy
– With her surroundings a fuzzed-out blur, Gilroy High School
senior Danielle Freitas shot out her arms to steady herself,
centering her focus on walking a straight line. A slight stumble
sent her toppling to the ground, her palms breaking the fall.
Gilroy – With her surroundings a fuzzed-out blur, Gilroy High School senior Danielle Freitas shot out her arms to steady herself, centering her focus on walking a straight line. A slight stumble sent her toppling to the ground, her palms breaking the fall.
Freitas wasn’t drunk. She was wearing “drunk goggles,” a pair of oversized glasses that impair wearers’ agility and distort their perception, mimicking the experience of being drunk. The goggles come in three versions, one imitating .5 blood alcohol level, the second for .15 and the third for .25, which caused Freitas her tumble.
The effects alcohol has on the body, reasons why students drink and the debate whether to legalize marijuana were a few of the topics covered on Teen Talk TV, a live call-in show put together by 36 students in GHS’s Peer Health class.
The show, taped in the Community Media Access Partnership studios at Gavilan College, was broadcast live Friday on ED-TV Cable Channel 19 to a handful of classes at Gilroy and Mount Madonna high schools.
Taught by Ed Kaufman, the class is made up mostly of juniors and seniors with a roughly even split between males and females. It’s been offered at GHS for a few years, but this is the first year the high school teamed up with CMAP to film a show. Panel discussions, debates and question-and-answer sessions with a GHS counselor are the main features of Teen Talk TV.
Students rotate jobs each episode, including running the cameras, hosting the show, operating the audio board, serving on the panel and asking questions as part of the audience. Topics are chosen by the students, and the shows are produced monthly and funded by the Kaiser Permanente Foundation.
The first episode, on sexual harassment, aired last month, and next month’s episode will be about sex. This month’s topic was drugs and alcohol.
The Peer Health class lasts for one year. Students spent last semester visiting local elementary and middle school classes and talking to those students about issues relevant to their lives, such as bullying.
Before donning the drunk goggles, Freitas sat on a four-member panel – two students who said they don’t drink and two who said they do – and candidly answered why, when and how much she drinks.
Both she and Richard Tover, the other panelist who said he drinks on occasion, said they only do so when at a party, around their friends and in the mood to have a good time. Even then, they said, it’s in moderation, and they never get into cars with people who have been drinking.
But Timeka Jones and Kevin Skogen, both seniors, said they’ve made a deliberate decision not to drink. Both students said they have family members who struggled with alcohol, and for them, drinking to be cool or to have fun just isn’t worth the risk.
“I don’t want to be down that path,” Skogen said.
The students’ conversation also touched on how drinking might affect relationships with their parents, and if their parents even know they drink.
“They know I’m responsible enough to not be stupid and dumb and go crazy,” Tover said.
When the student host asked the group how many of them had tasted alcohol, all but two of the 36 raised their hands. To those who had tried alcohol, she asked how many had decided to stop drinking. About three raised their hands.
Alcohol, marijuana and methamphetamine are the three most common drugs on the GHS campus, said guest counselor Larry Slovera, who answered questions and offered students advice on how to deal with peer pressure.
Students also debated the pros and cons of legalizing marijuana, both generally and medicinally, and pitched questions to each other ranging from how the drug might improve the quality of life for the ill to how legal sales could boost tax revenue.
Teen Talk TV gives students a chance to voice their opinions on issues that are meaningful to them in an open, honest and non-threatening atmosphere, said Suzanne St. John-Crane, executive director of CMAP.
“Mainstream TV gives voice only to those who have the money or power to obtain air time. CMAP allows shows like Teen Talk TV to be possible, where students can have their opinions heard and learn how to produce a television show,” she said. “From choosing the show topics to operating the cameras, the teens have total control over their message.”
Teen Talk
Teen Talk TV’s episode on drugs and alcohol will repeat on CMAP’s ED-TV Cable Channel 19 at 2pm today and Sunday, 7pm Mondays and Fridays and 4pm Tuesdays and Thursdays.
