By Mary-Justine Lanyon
For 25 years members of the Mountain Sunrise Rotary Club have been impressing upon students in the Rim of the World Unified School District the importance of the choices they make as young people.
“This program,” Rotarian Geoff Hopper told Mountain High students, “is to give you the opportunity to explore options in the choices you face.”
Hopper was joined by fellow Rotarians Laura Dyberg and Corina Colan as they took the students through a number of interactive exercises over the course of two days.
Using a rotary phone as a prop, Hopper asked how many apps it has. With the answer of just one – to call people – he told the students it’s like high school. “You don’t have a lot of apps at first but you accumulate them. That’s the whole thing about the Choices program – we will demonstrate there are many opportunities available to you. You may choose them or you may not.”
Asking how many of the students feel as though they have been stuck in school forever, Colan reminded the students it is just a little part of their lives. Unrolling a timeline, three volunteers demonstrated just how much of their lives is before them. “Whatever you decide now,” Colan said, “affects the rest of your life, including retirement.”
Playing the parts of a high school dropout, high school graduate and student studying beyond high school, Blake, Hunter and Maddie discover what opportunities would be available to them.
Dyberg passed out cards to the students with 30 different factors – like appearance, ethnicity, interests, religion – on them. “Which ones can you control?” she asked. The answer was they have control over at least half the factors listed.
“Of all the factors on the list,” Dyberg asked, “which one do you think will impact your life the most?” The answer was self-discipline, which can help control the others.
“If you can master self-discipline,” she told the students, “that will lead you the right way to master the others.”
Hopper led three students through an exercise where one was a high school dropout, one a high school graduate and one a person with education beyond high school. They were presented with a number of jobs – ranging from a video game designer to a food server. Of the nine jobs they were presented with, the dropout was eligible for two, the graduate for four and the person with additional education for all of them.
“It’s your call, your decision,” Hopper said. “It’s so easy to quit. I’ve done well because I refused to quit. The real world doesn’t care about your excuses.”
How much does it cost to be on your own out in the real world? Colan took a student named Kate, playing the part of a high school dropout who was working at a minimum-wage job, through all the expenses she would face – housing, food, utilities, taxes. There was little left for transportation, clothing. And she couldn’t afford to go to the movies and had no chance of getting a car.
A point Hopper made with the students is that the choices they make affect more than themselves – they also affect their younger siblings. “If you choose to go beyond high school, there is a 70-percent chance they will, too,” he said.
The Choices program also addresses time management. Using rocks, gravel and sand to fill up a container, the students learned about activities that are not optional, not flexible (rocks), those that have flexibility as to when you do them (gravel) and those that are totally optional (sand). By putting the rocks in the container first, they were able to add the gravel and finally the sand.
As the program drew to an end, Colan shared S.M.A.R.T. goals with the students – Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Timely. She passed out a goal getter sheet, asking the students to fill it out with their goal for when they are 25 and how they will achieve it.
Hopper and his fellow Rotarians, including Davis Hopper and Rick Miller, also presented the program to freshmen at Rim of the World High School.
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