Every October  St. Francis Middle School brings their 7th graders to the Youth Frontiers-Courage Retreat, whose mission is to empower kids and to help identify social fears and peer pressures that have effect on decision making.  I believe they do just that and more.
I participated in this retreat as a seventh grader at SFMS, but for the past two years I have gone as a volunteer and served as a group leader, which has given me a new perspective.
The retreat hasn’t changed much, they have the same games and activities, but most importantly the same goal.  Every year there is the last event that sticks out to people the most –  the pebble in the pond activity.  Students are encouraged to fill out a piece of paper and write down one act of courage that they are going to try and fulfill once they walk out the doors.  The lights are dimmed to make a peaceful, relaxing environment for the students.  People come up and say their act of courage and then set the pebble in the water.  The thought of it is that once they say their act of courage and set their  pebble in the water, they  are then creating a “ripple effect.” At that point they can  put their courage and thoughts out there and hope that others will do the same and carry it on.
It is difficult to stand in front of your whole class and express something so personal, but seeing all of this from an older point of view is crazy, and to see how things have changed in such a short amount of time is even crazier.  When I was their age, there were still the problems of bullying, standing up for people and self esteem issues.  A lot of kids talked about those things and were true- hearted when they said it.
However,  this year’s courage retreat stuck out to me the most out of all the years of going.  No matter how much time goes by,  people will have self image issues, but there were multiple young 12-year-old girls going up in front of their peers at the retreat talking about how they are having negative self image issues and they hate themselves for it.  That broke my heart.
Social media is bigger and more accessible now than it was when I was their age.  By the 6th grade, most kids have a Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and a Snapchat.  Their eyes and opinions get even more swayed into thinking a certain way by just being on all those sites.  It seems that self-esteem issues in girls are becoming more and more common at a younger age.  I personally find that disheartening and hard to even think about.   It’s hard to think kids at such young ages have so many social pressures and the baggage that comes along with that.  Just talking to these kids at the retreat amazed me with  how much they see and notice about the world that I never even thought about when I was that young.
After the retreat, however, I feel like there is just as much hope for kids who are having these problems. Kids said they would be there to help anyone out there who was hurting, regardless of who they were.  When kids get exposed to the negative things in life , I believe they get exposed to the emotional side of it just as much and learn how to help a person in those types of situations.
Over all this courage retreat was eye opening in more ways than one.   It gave everyone, students and teachers alike,  the reality check of what’s really going on with teenagers and how society and its images can really affect young people.
I guarantee everyone who was in that building walked out with a new perspective on courage and self reassurance that they are not alone – and that is what the courage retreat is all about.