BY MATT MACKINDER
Clarkston News Staff Writer
Julia Garcia visited Clarkston to bring a message of empowerment to boys and girls.
The nationally-renowned speaker’s message, Feb. 21 at Clarkston Junior High School and Feb. 22 at Clarkston High School, was directed at students’ social, emotional and physical well-being, with a focus on “human behaviors online and how today’s digital generation is spiraling into a virtual health crisis.”
“My overall impression would be hopeful,” Garcia said. “I feel that despite what a lot of the students express, what they were struggling through, that there was so much strength and encouragement. The action in my message is to rise up, and to find that reason to rise up. Rising up looks like so many things, but what I hope I communicated is what it doesn’t look like is staying silent about things that are affecting lives in a negative way.”
The assemblies were to help students deal with harassment, sexual assault and bullying, in addition to empowering students to make healthy and informed choices, learning positive options for bystander intervention, being a leader, and ways to shift the school culture in positive ways.
Garcia added there are many reasons why being a child in this day and age is difficult.
“Where do I start,” she asked. “It’s the constant exposure to what is possible and also what is not real. There is a fabricated culture that is on constant display on social media and they have an entirely different set of pressures because unlike generations before, they get to really choose what they want to do with their life, and that’s a lot of pressure.”
Students are just trying to get through school and puberty, while posting something that gets some “likes” on social media, she said.
“On top of that, they’re dealing with things at home or trauma that they’ve experienced that’s out of their control. What’s mainly different for these kids is that the pressures are different because of the job markets, job opportunities, and this constant exposure to the idea of perfection that we display online. Comparing your life to other people’s lives and always thinking they have something you don’t creates this never-ending pressure to want to achieve something that’s probably not even real.”
Some things need to be destigmatized, especially when it comes to mental health, she said.
“Being able to say, ‘I’m not OK’ – it’s OK to say that,” she said. “I want them to be empowered, to be able to speak up for themselves, for others, and to make connections as well.”
During the assemblies, Garcia asked questions regarding experiences kids may have had at one point. If they had been through whatever it was Garcia mentioned, they had to stand up. By the end of that session, the vast majority of the students were standing, proving Garcia’s message of not being alone, something the students realized.
“These kids need to know that they’re not alone,” said Staci Puzio, Clarkston schools’ director of student growth and well-being. “That was one of the things that came up when she asked the kids to stand. We’ve done some other things here that are similar to that, to allow the kiddos to see that they’re not the only ones feeling this way and that they are more connected and more alike than we may realize.”
Clarkston High School Assistant Principal Amy Quayle, who arranged Garcia’s visit on the recommendation of a previous speaker, said Garcia really connected with the students.
“Whenever you’re walking into a high school or a junior high school to talk about these topics, you have to understand the crowd you’re walking into,” Quayle said. “You can’t be a well-dressed gentleman or woman in a suit who is going to talk about these topics if you can’t connect with kids. You have to be able to draw them in. There has to be a dynamic about the way our speakers speak to our students and the way they look.
“Speakers that give off an edgy vibe, kids are into because it’s different and kids are engaged. Julia is authentic and vulnerable with the kids and she expresses herself by the way she looks on the outside. That look on the outside matches the person on the inside.”
For more information, check Garcia’s website at www.juliagarcia.nyc.