The Masco Peer Leading Program’s goal is to bring an exciting and enjoyable school year for new freshmen.
The club is run by its advisor, English teacher Michael Kelsen, and senior peer leading captains Rudy Chilel, Landen Boutilier, London Gray, and Belle Dicarlo.
The purpose of the club, which was founded in 1996, is to bring an enjoyable school year for the new freshmen.
“I think the purpose of this is to create a more welcoming environment, especially during a really hard transition from middle school to high school,” said senior Chilel. “I feel like my peer leaders guided me during that time. They taught me some tips and tricks.”
The peer leaders make sure to check in with their freshmen through monthly meetings.
“It’s very important because we give freshmen a place they can check in throughout the year,” said Boutilier.
Being a peer leader gives an opportunity to build trust among the freshmen and seniors.
“It establishes a mentoring relationship between people who are kind of nearing their end of high school year,” said Dicarlo. “It kind of helps because you have people who are really experienced with high school and I have learned tricks about high school and you have them teaching new people help them have the best possible experience with high school.”
The club also helps with future planning and guidance.
“It is also meant to help students build leadership skills,” said Kelsen. “I think everyone wants to be a leader, in a perfect world we’re all leaders but it’s a hard thing to know how to be a leader, and so I’m focused this year especially to try to build leadership qualities and skills in students who are upperclassmen and they should have more strength when it comes to guiding, supporting but also not commandeering something. So that is a focus for me.”
For Kelsen, his interest in the program started with his own high school experience. As a student at Masco himself in 2009, he became a peer leader.
“I love the idea of helping others and I really enjoy the group bonds that you have with your students. I think that’s partly why I wanted to teach too,” said Kelsen. “And then flash forward you know, ten odd years or so and I became a teacher at the high school here and it was at the time where the previous adviser was moving on and it was kind of pitched to me of taking it over, so that way we could ensure that it would still happen.”
The peer leading captains became involved and inspired by their own experiences as freshmen.
“I think we all got started in the program the same way, by being freshmen in the program and meeting our peer leaders on orientation for the first time,” said senior Boutilier. “And then a few years later, once the applications opened up to become peer leaders, for me it brought back all the fond memories I had of all the activities.”
Chilel’s reasons for joining were Sardar Rahman and Andrew Voner, his old peer leaders.
“He [Andrew] just made the experience for me, for high school, so much easier and funner. But for being here, a peer captain, my inspiration was Sadar. He was just a really great role model and I saw what he did with the club and the impact it had on everyone.”
Senior Dicarlo joined to have a positive impact.
“I definitely saw how much of an impact and I kind of wanted to contribute to that impact and also saw ways that I could help improve peer leading too and so I thought I would be a good contribution to it and I really wanted to help have an impact on the freshmen,” said senior Dicarlo. “I want to make an even bigger impact.”
Kelsen said that the club is important due to the big change from middle school to high school.
“I believe it is a huge adjustment and transition, and even though we are one building, we’re really two separate schools, the middle school and the high school,” said Kelsen. “There really isn’t much interaction and I think, especially for the students who don’t have older siblings, it’s overwhelming and the hope at the bare minimum is that you have two-three upperclassmen that you can trust and know their name.”
Not that long ago, the peer leaders were freshmen too, giving them the idea to join.
“I was a freshman not too long ago myself. My peer leaders ‘keep it 100 with me’. They would give me my little tips and tricks that I still use now and kinda guided me through a really chaotic time,” said senior Chilel. “My peer leaders kept me on top of things, because at the beginning I used an agenda but I’d always forget to check it and they’d give me some tricks, like they told me to set an alarm on my phone which I still do now, I do it super often, and they taught me a whole bunch of things.”
As a peer leader, one is able to learn from their students.
“It’s nice to have upperclassmen friends to talk to, and just get different experiences from,” said Dicarlo. “So I think peer leading is just great.”
Being a peer leader gives a sense of responsibility and leadership.
“I feel like it’s really important especially during a very chaotic time to remember to socialize, to live life, you’re only young once,” said senior Chilel. “I think it’s really important that we guide our students to excel academically but also to enjoy being alive.”
Peer leaders meet with their freshmen once a month to check in. Usually they meet during M-Block and a little bit of the long block, using this time to socialize and talk with their groups.
Peer Leading isn’t just for school; it is important for later on in life.
“It starts out with building community inside of our school but then it moves outside because community means a lot of different things and involves a lot of different people, and we do that with our events like the Days Of Giving around the holiday season,” said Kelsen. “We stress the importance of doing good together by helping those even if they aren’t directly involved with us, they don’t go to our school but it helps others.”