Written By Chelsea Pacheco
Photos by Chelsea Pacheco

Here at The Morgan School, the Principal Keri Hagness and Guidance Counselor Jan O’Brien created a group of 20 (seniors and juniors) girls who could brainstorm ideas to help younger girls with their self esteem and the stress that they face today.

While at the meeting, one of the girls mentioned that it is not only girls who suffer from self esteem and pressure, so do boys. Many boys in high school have the pressure of being a “jock”. They are the ones who walk around the hallways wanting people to think they are amazing at the sport they play. Their goal is to be the face or one of the faces of their sport.

Morgan is not the only high school that holds Women Empowerment meetings. Many schools along the Shoreline do. In the other programs, the schools work with the younger schools. The high school girls talk to the younger girls to relate and to make them feel that they are not alone. The high schoolers also give advice on what and what not to do. For example, many girls want to fit in so they change who they are to make other kids around them happy. “Don’t change to make others happy. Be the person you want to be so YOU are happy.”  While hearing that other schools work with the younger schools, we as a group decided that for one of our meetings we should all get on a bus. Half of us would go to Joel, and half of us would go to Pierson to talk to the girls. These younger girls need to know every girl goes through self esteem and peer pressure.  The high school students can share how they handle these issues. Many of the Morgan girls thought that working with other schools would be very healthy.

Mrs. Hagness and the rest of the staff that helps with Women Empowerment have a goal they want to achieve with this meeting and group of girls. Morgan wants to have all students feel better about themselves, to be happy in their own skin. Morgan wants everyone in the school to be confident and to not be afraid to be who they are.

One other important thought/discussion that came up was to have boys come to the next meeting.  Each girl is required to bring a boy to the next meeting. The boy I am willing to bring is Freshman Quinn Pender. Quinn shared, “I would come because I think that girls have a lot of self esteem issues. So do guys but not as much girls. I think that girls should feel more confident about themselves. I want girls to feel they can make a change in society, even in the school system at Morgan.  For boys, I think boys are more confident about themselves, and they seem to express their feelings right away. They are not afraid to say what is wrong. I also think that boys can have self-esteem issues, but they don’t let it control them, unlike girls. The self esteem controls them. We need both genders to feel confident in who they are, don’t let other people control them.”

In the future, the Women Empowerment’s meeting will have the original girls and also any girls that would like to join and share out ideas of their own.