The Community of Concern is a national organization that seeks to educate teenagers on the realities of alcohol, tobacco and drug use. At Brophy, there is a mandatory meeting that all freshman students and at least one parent or guardian must attend. After that meeting, there is no follow up or anything else to keep reminding people about it.
Mr. Austin Pidgeon ’08 said that “their primary model is delay, their approach is not to take some moral stand or religious stand or political stand on why teenagers should not engage with these substances, but to prioritize youth brain development and social development”. With this goal in mind for the community of concern, students are expected to remember everything that they heard in one meeting, for all four years of high school without ever hearing about it again.
Brophy is taking action to try to make it easier for students to learn and understand what they are hearing in the meeting. According to Pidgeon, “we have transitioned the program to prioritize students’ mental health and effectively offer the same education on the same topics but under the umbrella of student wellness and student mental health.”
Starting next school year, the community of concern will transition from being taught to freshmen to instead being taught to sophomores. “One of the reasons for this is, at the sophomore level, students encounter a lot more freedom. Kids are earning their drivers license, students are playing varsity sports and engaging more with upper classmen, and typically we see freedoms at home increase as students move their way up through high school”, said Pidgeon.
The expectation that Brophy has is that students walk away from the community of concern programming with a better understanding about the schools rationale for the policies that are in place about the topics of alcohol, tobacco and drug usage. Pidgeon said that “students should be intrinsically motivated to make good decisions because it impacts their mental health and their physical health.”
Despite Brophy’s efforts to instill the information that is taught through the community of concern, eight out of ten current Brophy seniors that I talked to said that they forgot about it. Two of them even asked “what’s that” when asked about it. This clearly shows that Brophy is not doing enough to get students to fulfill the expectations that they have with the community of concern.
Brophy should be pushing the ideas taught in the community of concern multiple times throughout the four year duration of high school. If there was a community of concern meeting for students at least every school year, it would be a lot easier for students to actually remember the community of concern and what it taught them.
