By Khalida Sarwari
Two students at Saratoga High School want their friends to know they have a safe place on campus to vent about boys or girls, homework, grades, parental pressures and life in general–a home away from home in Room HO7.
“My vision for this place is that this becomes that place you go to when you’re happy, when you’re sad, when you need something,” principal Paul Robinson told students at a recent open house announcing Common Roots, a new student club created in the spirit of similar groups at Los Gatos High and Gunn High School in Palo Alto.
Gunn has the ROCK club, which stands for Reach Out Care Know, and Los Gatos offers Counseling and Support Services for Youth, or the CASSY program. Both student clubs were started after a rash of student deaths at the schools. At Saratoga High, students are not exempt from the pressures faced by their peers in Los Gatos and Palo Alto, but until now they had no place to go with their frustrations.
“The atmosphere at our school isn’t great,” said Anup Kar, who founded Common Roots with fellow junior My-Lan Le. “There’s pressure from other students and parents. The atmosphere has always been about competition, grades, one-upping.”
Though they started talking about the idea for the club two years ago, the suicide of Audrie Potts, a 15-year-old sophomore who her family claims was sexually assaulted and then cyber-bullied by three of her male friends, served as further impetus for the club’s creation, said Anup.
“We want people to know they’re not alone here at Saratoga High,” My-Lan said. On May 3, Anup and My-Lan held an open house to inform the Saratoga High community about Common Roots and most importantly, to introduce the people central to the club: the peer mentors, who also go by “supporters,” “counselors” and “helpers.” The mentors are students at Saratoga High who have undergone training to handle potential problems of both the emotional and academic variety that they expect to hear from their peers. Their training, said Anup, was long and rigorous, and consisted of learning such fundamental skills as how to respond, to listen respectively and receptively, help without giving advice, and recognizing signs of depression and suicide. About 40 students have been trained thus far, at the cost of about $5,000, paid for by the school. Soon there will be another opportunity for students to apply for the position, said Anup.
A group of about six trained peer mentors will be available every day during lunch in Room HO7. They can be found working on their homework or socializing, but when a student needs to get things off their chest, a peer mentor will always be available to lend a ear, said Anup. In the world of Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, having a club like Common Roots on campus is invaluable, said assistant principal Brian Safine.
“There’s so many things going on in your lives,” he told the crowd of students gathered at the open house. “Having this space and having each other is going to do so much more than that electronic connection.” Echoing those words, Robinson said the club has gotten off to a promising start, and he’s confident it will make a positive mark on the community.
“This is going to be that real heartbeat to what’s going on on campus,” he said. And although face-to-face interactions is at the heart of Common Roots, a website is in the works, if only to serve as a database of the names, grade levels and email addresses of peer mentors. The next training session will be held over the summer and in October. The application process and deadline will be announced on the Common Roots Facebook page.
The long-term goal, said My-Lan and Anup, is to uproot Common Roots from Room HO7 to a student resource center that has yet to be constructed but is planned within the next few years. But in the not-so-long term, Common Roots will begin offering community-building events, such as potlucks, movie nights and games.
“I want people to love this school as much as I do,” Anup said, “and enjoy coming here every day and feel safe.”
For questions about Common Roots, email commonroots.shs@gmail.com.
Saratoga juniors start common roots club to help fellow students
