Peer Counselors Share Problems, Goals in Helping Fellow Students

Candice Torres and Autumn Beck knew just where to go last year after their close friend Marc Andrew Squires was shot to death at a party in Chatsworth.

Overwhelmed by anger, denial and guilt and confronted for the first time with their own feelings of mortality, the two 16-year-old Granada Hills High School students sought solace at the school’s Peer Counseling Center.

Torres was already involved in the school’s peer counselor program, where students who have been trained in listening and communication skills counsel other students.

Torres said the training she received helped her grapple with her emotions and enabled her to provide comfort and support for other friends of Squires who were devastated by his violent death.

“People came to me afterward because they knew I was a peer counselor and I let them know that I was there for them, and that I wouldn’t tell anybody what they told me,” she recalled.

“It was hard for me to see so many of his friends crying, and sometimes I would break down and cry with them. But it helped me cope because I got to see different sides of Marc from listening to his other friends.”

Beck had not been involved in peer counseling. But she participated in discussions at the center and was able to air her feelings.

That experience, she said, persuaded her to enroll in the peer counseling class. Now, she said, she has a place where she can regularly discuss matters on her mind and help others as well.

“I had a lot of questions, like ‘If there really is a heaven, will you remember people that you knew before?’ Once you feel confident with these other people, you can so easily open up to each other and talk about these things,” she said.

Torres and Beck shared their experiences during a daylong gathering at Cal State Northridge last week for more than 1,000 student peer counselors from the Los Angeles Unified School District.

The purpose of the forum was “to let them know they are doing good work, to develop a sense of community among other peer counselors and to help them learn new skills,” said Richard Mills, peer counseling consultant for the school district’s student guidance services division.

The popularity of peer counseling has skyrocketed in Los Angeles schools the last four years after the district’s Office of Student Counseling began putting courses into the curriculum at junior and senior high schools. In 1985, only five schools had peer counseling, but now more than 100 schools have such programs.

The elective classes teach students active listening and how to ask probing questions without seeming to interrogate. Students are also taught the importance of confidentiality and how to interpret nonverbal signals.

They are instructed to notify adult counselors when confronted with particularly serious problems.

Once trained, peer counselors play varying roles.

Mark Smith and his fellow peer counselors at Van Nuys High School write advice columns for the school newspaper and lead rap sessions.

Jasmin Riss and Cathy Gonzalez, peer counselors at David Starr Jordan High, tutor youngsters at an elementary school. Recently, they said, they were able to comfort a first-grader who was devastated by the death of her grandfather.

“She was really close to him and she felt alone,” Gonzalez recalled. “We told her he would still be watching her and loving her every minute. She cried for a week, but then she felt better.”

At Eagle Rock High School, peer counselor Don Lovato was called by administrators in September to counsel a student who considered dropping out after being wrongly accused of “tagging” the campus with gang graffiti.

The student believed that his teachers were insulting him and saw no point in continuing with school. Lovato said he challenged the student to prove his teachers wrong by succeeding where they predicted that he would fail.

“I told him, ‘You can do anything that you set your mind on,’ ” Lovato said.

Seven months later, the student is still in school and has told Lovato several times that his words made a difference. “I feel kind of proud,” Lovato said.