CHOICES! Revisited ... Reaching New Generation of Students

As a high school teacher twenty-five years ago, I was “upstaged” in class one morning by a student returning from four weeks in drug rehab.

As I was preparing my students for a writing assignment on Ode to a Grecian Urn Curt was answering questions his classmates were asking about his stay at The Rehab Center. I immediately saw Curt’s experience was more interesting than my Grecian Urn and I gave him ten minutes to tell his story. The elicited responses from students were unbelievably well written, honest and shocking. My students opened up for the first time about their own teen issues including drugs, alcohol, anorexia, bulimia, teen pregnancy, racial prejudice and many more.

These papers were anonymously shared with colleagues, the administration and the Board of Education. Although the process took a year, what followed was a play called CHOICES, performed by my students throughout the United States. It was featured in several publications and made into an Emmy-Award winning documentary. At Lindbergh, where I was teaching, we hired a crisis counselor, began a Peer Listening group, had week-end retreats, and eventually initiated an alternative school at Lindbergh, now called The Academy.

I have often wondered what happened to all of my at-risk students from the 1980s, although I have kept in touch with many of them. So when a television producer friend and colleague of mine wrote the following to me, I was ecstatic:

“I got the final approval to produce the story about you for the August episode of "Behind The Minds."  I'm looking at a one day shoot in May where we can record all sound bites, alternative b-roll, and you speaking on stage. I will use the angle: A National Hall of Fame teacher/radio &TV show host, now successful touring speaker returns to her school where she and her students created one of the most successful theater departments in the state.

In 1986 she and her students wrote and produced a teen issues program called CHOICES. A documentary was produced through Bell Telephone and the video and educational packet were made available free of charge for other schools throughout the United States. They took the opening to LA and it was introduced by Gary Sandy of WKRP in Cincinnati. It is now 25 years later and these kids are parents themselves (some of their parents were also interviewed in the original documentary.)”

Twenty-five years later I would love to report that the teen issues of back then do not still exist. Unfortunately, many have increased. Thus, we are teaming up with the present Lindbergh theater teacher and her students to see if they, too, are addressing the same problems now facing this generation. We see this as a real opportunity and privilege to "pay it forward." There will always be CHOICES.

The public is invited to this televised event at at 7 p.m. May 27 in the Lindbergh High School Auditorium, 4900 S. Lindbergh Blvd.

Dr. Debra Peppers, a professional speaker for 25 years, is one of only five inducted into the National Teachers Hall of Fame upon her retirement from Lindbergh High School. A member of the National Speakers Association, she has traveled to all 50 states and 60 countries teaching others that if she can go from being a 250-pound high school dropout, to Teacher of the Year there is hope for every child and adult. Her web site is www.pepperseed.org.