Molly Limaye ’21
Dhilan Lavu ’21
The sophomore class and their parents participated in SpeakUp! on January 30th, an event that facilitates conversations between parents and adolescents about difficult topics, including mental health, drugs and alcohol, and social media. EA has been participating in SpeakUp! for eight years. The advantage to the event is that students are not in the same room as their parents, so they can hear other opinions and possibly feel more comfortable speaking about difficult topics if their parents are not in the room. After the event, many sophomores began to discuss their feedback and how the event can be improved.
Students generally enjoyed being able to get a parent’s perspective on teenage issues. Declan Brown ‘21, said “I thought the parents brought up a lot of good points and hearing their ideas on the subject was definitely impactful.” Will Semmer ‘21, a student leader went a step further, saying “Although we had lots of good discussions, there were certain questions that parents weren’t allowed to ask the students because they were a bit too personal. I personally felt that this was close-minded and that some great discussions could have come out of these questions.”
However, students may not want to answer such personal questions because of the high likelihood of having a friend’s parent or a parent that a student knows well in the room. Many students said that they did not feel comfortable saying certain things because they were worried that the parent would tell their own parents. Joe Shirley ‘21 suggested, “Other schools like Haverford and Agnes Irwin have the sophomores meet with the freshmen parents instead, so the likelihood of knowing a parent in your room decreases immensely. If a student has something very personal to say, they might not want to say it to their friends parents, but now they can be more honest.” Michael Letts, Head of Upper School, agrees with this idea, saying, “It still achieves the same purpose where kids can talk openly about their experiences and parents can have feedback but it could minimize discomfort.”
Letts also attended SpeakUp!, and he suggests having more faculty attend the future events. “It would be valuable for teachers to hear the student and parent perspective because oftentimes teachers don’t fully understand students’ experiences. Hopefully students will feel like they can see their teachers in a different light, and if they ever have trouble, then there’s one more person that might be there to help.”
Andrea Bagnell, SpeakUp!’s Development Coordinator, says, “We have received really positive feedback after EA’s SpeakUp!. While it’s mandatory for sophomores to attend, it’s invaluable to have students from all the grades come and share their perspective. We hope that the sophomores will participate again next year as each SpeakUp! experience is unique and enlightening.”
Students and administrators generally believe that Speakup! has been a valuable addition to EA’s growing retinue of student health resources and events. Erin Boyle ‘20 another student leader said “I truly enjoyed the open environment and loved that students were allowed to speak out about how they truly feel about these issues.” Letts agreed saying, “Any conversation we’re having where we can provide our families with more perspectives is a good conversation and is certainly worth an evening program.”