On Nov. 8 and 9, students and staff came together for two nights to connect and listen to each other at Awareness Weekend. Awareness Weekend was started by a former social worker, Jim McGowan, back in 1989. It was modeled after a program called HUGS (Human Understanding and Growth Seminar). For over 35 years, students and staff have met together twice a year over a weekend. Each year, one weekend is overnight and the other is not, giving more students the opportunity to come.
Awareness Weekend is a place where everyone is accepted. It is a judge free zone where people are allowed to open up about their mental health struggles, family issues or whatever is going on in their life to know people support them and they are not alone. It was created to bring awareness to other people and to make people realize they are not alone.
Senior Fabiana Orellana says, “Feeling emotional and vulnerable is not something I do often and I wanted to come to experience feeling this way and to connect with new people.”
Peer support club encourages students to go to Awareness Weekend at least once. Being a part of it can make students feel connected and less alone. It is a great way to meet new people and learn from them. Awareness Weekend gives participants a chance to meet different people students and staff may not have known they would ever connect with. It shows a different side of people that some people may not feel comfortable sharing during school hours. The weekend is filled with so many different activities and games. Students and staff are also given dinner, breakfast and lunch with a variety of different options such as pizza, Italian food, bagel salad, and many other food options.
“Connecting with kids I don’t know is the best part. I like the comfort of it and how we can connect and how it is different from a normal school day. You can see many students and teachers in a different light here,” says learning center teacher and facilitator at Awareness Weekend Kerri Degraff.
Students and staff are able to connect with each other on more of an informal basis while calling teachers by their first name. It gives more of a way to feel connected to each other. It is a way to make students feel more comfortable and teachers as well to feel more seen by one another.
This year there were more students who came to Awareness Weekend for the first time than usual. During the weekend students and staff do many activities together. There are many games to play and group activities to do with each other along with the main focuses of the serious and intense parts in Family Group and Community Share. Family Group is the part of the weekend where you stay with a group of people you may not know and talk about things. It is a group of five to six people and it is a way some students may feel more comfortable sharing than doing it at Community Share where there are a lot of students and staff. It gives an opportunity for more students to share with others about how they are feeling. During community sharing, students and staff go up to the front of the little theatre and talk about things going on in their life or something they need to get off their chest. This weekend is a safe space for all students who chose to go and it is really special to many of the students and staff.
“I think that it takes speaking to kids one on one about how meaningful it can be, and also kind of breaking down the stigma of it’s just a place where people go to to cry. It’s explaining that, yeah, you might cry, you also might laugh, you might meet a new friend, you might meet an old friend who you didn’t realize that you had anything in common with. And it really is just about breaking down walls and building bridges, which is what it’s known for,” says Awareness Weekend facilitator, Heather Niedzwiecki.
This weekend shows students that they are not alone and it is okay to not be okay. You can relate to other students you may have not known before or some of your own teachers. It is a safe space for students to feel vulnerable with the strict confidentiality rule and the no phone policy that make the experience more personable and closed in without the outside world and other distractions. Some students may feel they do not like to be vulnerable, but Awareness Weekends can sometimes push students to speak about themselves and to feel confident about themselves.
“I enjoyed going to Awareness Weekend because I met new friends I did not think I would connect with and I got to know people on a deeper level in a safe space,” says sophomore Abigail Asturias.
Awareness Weekend is a tradition that helps students and staff feel listened to and make them feel less alone. It is an inviting space of no judgment where everyone can be themselves without feeling that they have to put on a persona.
