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EAST WINDSOR: Peer-to-Peers assisting fellow middle schoolers

By Doug Carman, Staff Writer
   EAST WINDSOR — Middle school can be rough for sixth-graders. Aside from the heavy textbooks and the homework, many of them have to deal with a new degree of bullying, peer pressure and sibling rivalry, not to mention drug and alcohol abuse.
   Sure, they might have their parents and teachers to confide in. But Kreps Middle School eighth-grader Nicholas “Niko” Alstan suggested other eighth-grade “role models” in the New Jersey Peer-to-Peer Program have a better understanding of what they’re going through.
   ”When we were in the sixth grade … they were role models to us,” Niko said of the mentors. “Sometimes it’s uncomfortable to go up to teachers … . When I was in the sixth grade … they came out 40 years old and they never understood me.”
   Hillary Stryker, the student assistance counselor at Kreps who coordinates the school’s peer program along with sixth-grade counselor Frank Vespe, said the program had been in place since 2004 at Kreps. Currently, the 15 eighth-grade students who signed up to be peer mentors in the program this year spend one class period a month going to one of the sixth-grade classes. In a recent session, video-recorded and shown to the school board at its March 24 meeting, the peer mentors role-played a scenario involving a bully, asking the sixth-graders how to resolve the conflict.
   Eighth-grader Elyse Zilocchi said they focus on dealing with the problems they face in school and at home. As Niko said, Elyse said the students absorb it better from them.
   ”We’ve been in their shoes,” Elyse said “They like to hear it from us.”
   Jessica Lopez, another eighth-grader who participates in the Peer-to-Peer program as a mentor, suggested that she and the other mentors help themselves by helping others. She said that by showing the sixth-graders how to handle the difficulties and pressures of their lives — and teaching younger kids what not to do — she is making herself a better person.
   Niko applied the skills to his own dilemmas. He credits his persuasive speaking and mentoring skills honed in the program for his ability to straighten out a friend of his. This friend, he said, was a hockey player whose skills — and life — were getting messed up in part because of a drug habit.
   He said he was able to convince him to sober up.
   ”It gave me some skills I didn’t know I had,” Niko said.
   Of course, the motivations for the eighth graders can also be a bit less altruistic.
   ”We get out of class!” Jessica laughed. “It’s the truth — I still have straight A’s, so it’s all good.”