Students ‘Help the Hills’ for a 3rd year

Each year, a group of juniors and seniors at Vestavia Hills High School pledge to abstain from drugs, alcohol and e-cigarettes as members of the Help the Hills student team. This year, the student-run team plans to continue their work mentoring Vestavia Middle School students, though it may look a little different due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The student team was first established in 2017 under the Help the Hills Coalition, which promotes healthy living and a safe environment in the Vestavia Hills area. Students must go through an application and interview process to be selected for this leadership role.

The student team has grown both in number and influence since it was first created. The team for the upcoming school year will be made up of 168 members — more than triple the amount students involved in its first year.

“Our numbers have grown so much that we have what I would consider a critical mass of students to change the [teen drinking and vaping] culture,” said Kym Prewitt, one of the group’s faculty sponsors.

In previous years, the Help the Hills student team met during a daily study time, Prewitt said.

“Having these students together on a regular basis helps strengthen their individual resolve to stay on course in terms of making good decisions,” she said. “It is a way to remind them of the pledge they made to the organization, each other and themselves.”

With the pandemic will come many changes regarding how the group will operate. For example, like many other groups, not being able to hold in-person meetings while social distancing introduces the challenge of staying committed to the group’s values.

However, even in the midst of a pandemic, the new group of students remains committed to upholding their pledge.

“I have grown so much already in the past few weeks from being a chairman of the Help the Hills student team,” said Mary Helen Peerson, one of the team’s leaders. “It gives me hope that everyone can make good choices to not drink, smoke or vape when I see all of the hardworking people in our group as well as the overwhelming number.”

Students on the team go out of their way to hold each other accountable for their actions.

“The students who have joined to better themselves and better each other ... have helped me personally grow and become a better person and leader,” Peerson said.

This spring, members of the team were planning to give speeches at Pizitz and Liberty Park middle schools on what motivated them to take the pledge to not drink or vape.

Speeches ranged from stories about alcohol-related family tragedies to reasons why the pledge they took aligned with their own moral values.

“I listened to each speaker practice, and some of the stories shocked me and broke my heart,” Peerson said. “Witnessing the courage [that] it took to give their stories about why they don’t drink meant so much to me because it was then that I realized how much they wanted others to make the right choice. We all care for each other so much.”

An abrupt end to the school year in March meant that the students were unable to deliver their speeches to eighth grade students in April. However, the student team is already hard at work planning for the fall.

A significant part of their plans are accountability groups, Peerson said. This will provide a way to keep students in touch with each other without having to physically be together.

In these groups, students will simply invite friends within their natural circle of influence to commit together to not drink or vape, Prewitt said. There will not be any formal contract; it will just be students holding each other accountable.

Additionally, during the 2020-21 school year, the student team plans to continue mentoring eighth and ninth-grade students through small group presentations, according to the group’s mission statement.

“COVID-19 will likely push us to be creative about how we present our material and stories,” the statement said. “Regardless of the way we go about our mission, we will continue to encourage and support one another to live the best life we can.”

The juniors in this year’s group were in the first eighth-grade group to be mentored by Help the Hills students, Prewitt said, which is part of the reason why their numbers have “exploded” from 86 to 168 between 2019 and 2020.

“This was my first sign that what we are doing is working,” Prewitt said. “It is a great measure of success for us.”

There are many reasons that motivate students to join Help the Hills. Like Peerson, many students join because they have watched older students that they look up to grow in the program.

“My upperclassmen friends told me it was a great opportunity and that I should join, and they were so right,” Peerson said. “I also wanted to be part of a group that has helped me and so many others grow stronger in our beliefs.”

Being part of the student team leaves a lasting impact, said Delaney McIntyre. McIntyre was a member of the first Help the Hills student team in the 2017-18 school year and is now a rising junior at Auburn.

“[The team] definitely put me in a community with very like-minded people and made me very confident in my own morals and beliefs,” McIntyre said. “In college, not everyone is like you, so just knowing that you can do life alongside people that may not make the same choices as you while still knowing who you are is so important.”

The connections one makes through this program are also very meaningful, said McIntyre, who was able to mentor students in Help the Hills while also leading many of them as a counselor at Camp Winnataska.

“They got to see someone that they looked up to at camp also in the real world,” McIntyre said. “It also helped me remember when I was in their shoes.”

McIntyre emphasized how close-knit the Vestavia community is, an important reason that her memories of being on Help the Hills continue to resonate with her.

“I could bump into [kids I mentored] at the grocery store and still feel like I am connected to them,” she said.

The current student team planned to meet in July to decide in more detail how Help the Hills can continue to “flourish and thrive” in the Vestavia school system, Peerson said. “COVID-19 won’t stop our growth or lessen our strength.”