By Kathleen Acuff
 Members of Mountain View High School’s Unidos Club were honored at an awards breakfast last week. Here, from left, holding certificates from Assemblymember Sally Lieber at a reception early this month, are Jeff Morgan, Justin Greenberg, Itzel Sanchez, Sandra Hernandez, Martin Smith, Sammy Sorbo, Erika Mueller, Brett Stricker and Cecilia Quiñones. |
Teens at Mountain View High School have been honored for taking the concept of peer-to-peer influence to the next level. The Unidos Club has earned the Positive Peer Influence award from Project Cornerstone, a countywide collaborative to help teens and children connect with the community.
Unidos’ imaginative expansion of peer influence impressed the awards review panel. Club members not only work at having a positive influence on each other, but they also work - and play - in ways that make a positive difference to the children of Mountain View’s Castro Elementary School.
Project Cornerstone spokesperson Brenda Komar said, “They’ve done a great job of nurturing each other as teens and nurturing younger kids and serving as positive role models for them as well. The review board was really impressed by the multifaceted nature of their mission - they took it to the next level. They’re doing an amazing job of developing assets.”
The efforts of each Unidos member were recognized last week at an awards breakfast in San Jose. Each received a certificate, and the school and the club each received a trophy.
Student Matt Griffin and teachers Cecilia Quiñones and Jeff Morgan founded Unidos in the 2003-2004 school year. The club now has four presidents, Sammy Sorbo, Joe Cannon, Laura Polden and Justin Greenberg, because “we realized that it was easier if they just shared the various duties, and they are all qualified leaders so they all share the role and duties of president,” Morgan said.
The club’s mission statement challenges its members to “be role models at all times” and states that the keys to success are honesty, constancy, dedication, kindness and politeness.
Unidos members work as a team with Castro students to reinforce good manners and help the children by guiding them. They serve as mentors to the younger students, going over their homework with them but not doing it for them. They play together as well, but not during lesson time.
The club’s guidelines say: “Let’s remember that Unidos is a family. Let’s teach our little ones that we care for each other. … Let’s make a commitment to get to know every member of our Unidos family.”
Project Cornerstone exists to provide developmental assets for teens and children. The organization defines 40 such assets as “the positive relationships, opportunities, values and skills that young people need to grow up caring and responsible.” The assets are divided into eight categories: support, empowerment, boundaries and expectations, constructive use of time, commitment to learning, positive values, social competencies and positive identity. The organzation, which wants children to thrive, defines “thriving” as having at least 31 of the 40 developmental assets.
In October, the organization asked 14,000 fourth- through 12th-graders at 95 county schools - including those of Mountain View-Los Altos Union High and Mountain View-Whisman school districts - about their experiences growing up in the community.
The results, released last week, show that 72 percent of fourth- through sixth-graders and 92 percent of older students lack the assets they need to thrive.
Fourth- through sixth-grade students felt they have an average of 26.8 of the 40 assets the survey asked about. Middle and high school students said they have only 18.8. Only 35 percent of the younger students and a mere 18 percent of middle and high school students feel that the community values children and teens.
Fifty-five percent of fourth- through sixth-graders reported opportunities for useful roles in the community, but only 26 percent of older students did. Only 26 percent of middle and high school students and 56 percent of fourth- through sixth-graders said they have positive adult role models. However, 88 percent of fourth- through sixth-graders and 68 percent of middle and high school students report positive peer influence.
