Yvette Flippen is the health educator at "Beecher 103" the county youth center that is stationed at Beecher High School in Flint, Michigan. She is one of those who created the Peer Educators, and is still the coordinator.
YVETTE FLIPPEN: Are you interested in how the program started?
AARON PROPES: Sure.
YF: Well, as I said, it's about four years old now. When we first got here we were trying to think of a way to get kids involved that aren't sick, that wouldn't need to come to the clinic. So we started a drama club, because we saw a lot of them liked to read poetry, liked to perform, dance, rap, and all of that. So we started the drama club; we had about 60 kids in the drama club. And we would, you know, do things to entertain ourselves, and go out into the community and do presentations. But from that, we got about 15 kids who were serious about becoming trained and getting a knowledge base for becoming peer educators.
AP: They came to you? They came to the Center?
YF: A couple kids asked, had been interested in it. And I guess I, as a health educator, had an interest, an interest to get a program started. So it was the drama club I went to, because, like hey, you know, this is going to be really serious. Anyone want to commit themselves to it? And we got about 15 kids out of there to interview for the positions, and I think we filled them all. I think about six or seven positions. So that's how it started off. And then we started with the training.
AP: What did the training consist of?
YF: Right now it's different. When I initially started, do you want to look at, comparing the times? Or do you want to know what we're doing now?
AP: What you're doing now is fine, because it's more refined by now.
YF: Yeah yeah yeah. We learned a lot.
AP: Because everything I've done has changed over time, too.
YF: Yeah. Definitely. What we're doing right now is ongoing training. A lot of peer education programs I've been exposed to go by a set curriculum, because a lot of them are on a school-year calendar or whatever. We open year-round, so the program goes year-round, and the training goes year-round. Our training is ongoing. We set our agenda as the need arises. One example would be if something happens in the community or the nation that is relevant to adolescents, we start learning more about it, so we can become more articulate about it, instead of saying "Oh, gosh darn it, we'd like to do that, but today's the week we talk about date rape." So I don't have a set curriculum. We go with the flow, or where the need is, or maybe some kid will ask some questions, "Oh, you don't know about sexual harassment, do you?" So we'll study that, we'll test that, we'll take that on.
AP: Do you have a certain [set schedule]? Because, when I called, you said today was "theatre day."
YF: Right. We go four days a week, Mondays and Fridays are our theatre days where they meet with Bruce Bradley, who is our drama instructor, drama coach. He's a professional actor, dancer, writer, director, he's a lot of good things rolled up into one. So we're really blessed to have him working with us. So on Tuesdays and Thursdays they come in with me and we'll do the health education part of it: Watching videos, reading pamphlets, having discussions, doing training, having some outside resources come in. That's where the knowledge base comes in.
AP: I noticed when I got the information from Sarasota, they mentioned there is a video that the group produced.
YF: The teen sexuality video? Would that be it?
AP: Yes.
YF: You want one? (laughter)
AP: I'd love one!
YF: (laughter) Good, because you're going to get one anyway, cause we've got a lot we're trying to get rid of.(1)
(laughter)
YF: We ordered, I don't know, a couple hundred. We sold most of them. But we've got a good thirty of them left. We did that a few years ago. I think that was, um... (to a student studying) Were you in that, Takeah? (2) student responds‹ unintelligible on the recording) The peer sex video? No, it was before your time, I believe. (to me) I believe we did that, this was as a result of the drama club. Remember what I said? The drama club was before the peer educators. As we were just beginning to pull [in] the peer educators, we put this together. So this is mostly drama club, but it does have‹
AP: Just before they started?
YF: Um-hmm. Just as we were getting things going. So we had a lot of fun with it.
AP: What's the format of it?
YF: It's like a talk show. What we did was we took about five vignettes, altogether the vignettes are about 15 minutes long. But we took about five vignettes, and the studio audience would look at the vignettes and the kids would react to it.
AP: OK.
YF: And, you'll find it's kind of slow in the beginning, but after they get warmed up and some issues get out there they really start talking. Michael Young was our facilitator. He was our clinical psychologist at the time. He was a facilitator, walking around like Ms. Oprah, I guess. And just seeing what was on their mind, and everything. The kids made the video, they wrote it and everything.
AP: What is the format now? Has it changed from that?
YF: Format for what?
AP: When you do a performance?
YF: It depends on what people want. I mean, like today I got a call for a lady who wants me to come over and do a workshop for teen sexuality. And there's certain limitations people have. So it just depends on what they need. The normal format is for us to go in and the kids would do a skit. And the peer educators are trained to facilitate the discussion thereafter. I'm there to kinda step in if things are not moving in the right direction, or if someone can't answer a question, or doesn't answer it completely, I'll step in. Otherwise, I'll let them handle it all. As I was saying before, with the teen sexuality workshop that the lady wants me to do, she wants me to facilitate. So I'll do my part to make sure all the information is out there, then the kids will come on to do their skits and their facilitation, and then they're off again. Or maybe they'll help me with some interactions, or some exercises with the kids, because the kids are younger, 15 or 16. We have to cut out some of the information that maybe we would do for older kids, or all high-school. But when you're dealing with 13 year-olds, maybe there's some things they're not ready for, or the person who organizes it is not ready for, I don't know. So we're always conforming our presentations for different age groups or different subjects. For instance, one presentation that we're going to do is in a church setting, so where we may say "damn" or something like that, we won't be able to do that. So we just conform to the needs, but the basic format is for the peer educators to facilitate after they present.
AP: How would you, could you give me an example on how you might change something for maybe a class of 17 or 18 year-olds versus a class of 13 year-olds.
YF: Well, for the 17, 18 year-olds, we're talking about, for instance, teen sexuality or STDs, or something like that, we'd get into protecting themselves, talk about condoms, and how to get them, what they're made of, where they can get them, and using them, and maybe some other methods of birth control; as opposed to the younger kids who can get more into sexual decision making, how to say no, how to say no and keep your friends, talking about abstinence. We do concentrate on abstinence with the older kids, but we already accept that they're having sex, and we don't spend a whole lot of time on that because that's a whole lot of time spent in vain. So we do talk about abstinence with the younger kids and let them do a lot of role playing; how to get out of situations; especially those who do like to get into foreplay, but are not ready for sex; how to cut it off at that point; or maybe avoid that situation altogether.
AP: Do you involve the audience more than just something "out there"?
YF: Oh, definitely.
AP: Role-playing.
YF: Those have been our most successful workshops, wouldn't you say Takeah? (to Takeah) The ones that we get them involved. (to me) We went to this one group last year, where we were working with teen parents. They called it Talk Soup, or something like that. And we went in and we would portray a negative scenario of teen parenting. Maybe daddy wouldn't buy diapers, or mamma was so busy trying to go out all the time, she wasn't taking care of the child. We would play that skit out. Then we would get two or three audience members. They would take those same characters they just saw in the skit, take them out into the hallway, fix it up and come back in and display ways they could get around these problems, or ways they could perceive these problems differently, and just have some solutions. And they would act out those solutions. So we find that is more of a learning experience for them, instead of us just doing all of the talking. See, I said I go on a lot. (laughter)
AP: Keeps me from doing a lot of the work. Let's see, I lost my train of thought. Um, what are some of the more in-demand workshops?
YF: Every year we pick a theme. Whatever we think is going to be one of the hottest issues. And last year was violence prevention, and again this year is violence prevention, because that's what people are asking us [for]. Just like right here, I've got the March calendar, and sexuality is real hot, 'cause we got sexuality here, here, and then we've got violence prevention here, violence prevention here, for the board meeting. So what's happening a lot is that we get a lot of requests for the HIV/AIDS skit and the violence prevention skit. Those are the ones that's hot. A lot of the people aren't paying so much attention to teen pregnancy, as much as the need for other things. AIDS and all that is just overriding having babies these days. Those have been the highest requested skits: the violence prevention and the‹ as a matter of fact, the kids are going to Florida in the end of June to do a conference with other peer educational programs and the focus is going to be on HIV and violence prevention.
AP: One of the things that I wanted to ask you about, and the question was brought up in the context of a scene on sexual assault, but I'm sure it applies to everything. How do you show the systems involved in these situations? The criticism that we encountered was that, in this case it was a rape, it ignored the systems [and gave instead] flash, glitz, as well as reenacting [a harsh] situation for the survivors in the audience.
YF: If I hear what you're saying, how would we address, say if someone experienced a date rape, how would we address date rape without affecting the people in the audience that may have experienced it?
AP: Well, our main criticism was how would you get the systems involved in creating the situation, rape or violence. She was like... the areas that create the situations, what goes into the rape culture? The mentalities?
YF: I'm not hearing what you're saying.
(PA interrupts for end-of-school announcements)
AP: We did a scene for [an] acquaintance rape, where someone, off [from] a date, and the critique was that we didn't show any of the mental processes, the societal processes that led up, in this case, the male being set to rape. How does your group, and we tried to defend it, but by that time the class [we were presenting in] was out of hand; someone made the criticism, and our facilitator said we'd get back to that; we were invited to a class, and the class was packed. We had been in the class before, a year before, and we weren't expecting [that treatment]. If they wanted a critique of the process, tell us ahead of time.
YF: Right, right. The agendas were different.
AP: And the rest of us were stuck in character, so we couldn't answer.
YF: Right, right. I understand that too. I think in answering that, one of the reason our skit on date rape is so long is because we do try to address those issues. That is one of the longer ones, that one is probably a good 15 minutes. And we do address a lot of the mental anguish that's involved. We address a lot of the set-ups. (to Takeah) Help me out Takeah, because I know you're not studying, anyway, so I don't know why you're perpetrating it in front of Mr. Propes (3). (to me) But anyway, in some of the set-ups in date rape, some of the scenes, how does it seem like there's a pathway for the guy a lot easier. Remember they were talking about the football player, take the football player and the little girl, the alcohol factor, and he's saying "you know you wanted it", and the access was so easy because she was under the influence, and the question of her saying no, she went to his room... Those the things you're talking about?
AP: Yeah.
YF: Even though no is no, all of those things were set up and the path was made easy, and the mentality that it possibility couldn't be rape was out there. (recording not intelligible) they keep going back to the courtroom, and people who are set free who are definitely guilty. How they get caught up in the judicial system, who sometimes loses people, the mental anguish of trying to ask for help, and not getting any help, getting raped and then questioning yourself. All of that is involved, and I think that's one of the reasons why that skit is so long. It is heavy, too, it'll leave you sitting like, "Whoa." But, it's hard, you can't really go anywhere, especially with teenagers and pre-adolescents think these days, they have very deep thoughts. They have very deep thoughts, these days. You can't go in with something that's five minutes long and try to drive home a deep message. You could probably do that with "just say no" or something. (a long, electronic tone sounds) [about the tone] School bell. But something as heavy as that, you need to take your time and get a lot of issues out and then open it up with discussion. I hope that answers your question.
AP: It's something I'm going to try to address in the paper, because it's the one real thing that was brought up [as a critique], and it was brought up in my school, and considering these people are going to grade it... (laughter) It's worth-while... How many students are involved right now?
YF: There are eleven. Three males. All range from 9th to 12th grade. We have mostly 9th and 10th graders. We have two seniors graduating, no juniors.
AP: So most get involved when they're freshmen?
YF: Actually, what we have done, and it comes from past experience, is we felt that the maturity level from juniors and seniors... we kept losing them the following year. So we need to recruit young. So we went into the middle school, and got some interested kids in 8th grade, and now those 8th graders are 9th graders, and they'll probably be in the program for five years, by the end of it. But we're not only looking, trying to make our retention longer, but we have more of an impact on their lives for a longer period of time, the younger we get them. Because a lot of kids we thought we could have helped, but only had them for one year.
AP: And the more they're involved in the program, the more they're going to know (unintelligible)
YF: Exactly.
AP: How much do you know about them being approached during classes, themselves? Outside of the program here.
(Takeah answers – tough to understand, she was a ways away from the tape recorder)
AP: So they do use you as a resource?
TAKEAH: Yeah.
YF: I think that one of the things, when we hire the kids, interview them, they have to be viewed as role-models in the school. We really can't always have the creme of the crop, fall into the nerd category. We have a good mixture. We've got trouble makers, we've got some kids who make good grades, kids who don't, but the ones we think that other kids will listen to and respect, and I've had other peer educators say, they'll be talking about issues in class, and they'll say, "Ask so-and-so, she's a peer educator." So I think in that regard, they're respected.
AP: That's interesting that you talked about trouble makers getting into the program. I guess, my time in high school, the people classified as trouble makers just wouldn't do anything. Is it sought out to get into here?
YF: Is it hard to get in?
AP: Is it hard to get in– is it something that's sought out by the people at school?
YF: Actually, it's kind of a two way street. I'll give you one interesting case of a young lady, who's a teen mom, and at one point, was tethered.
AP: I'm sorry?
YF: You get in trouble with the law, and you get strapped, and they know where you are at all times.(4)
AP: Oh, yeah, I know what you're talking about.
YF: And [she] was looking for help. "I need something to do. I need to get involved." And at the same time I was coming to the point, that we can't have all these little cupcakes in here that, "Oh, I never do anything wrong, and I study real hard, and get all A's" because the kids go, "nyaa". And we gave her a shot and she was beautiful. We would go places and talk about teen sexuality, she could be the peer educator that would stand up and say, "I know 'cause I got a baby at home. I know 'cause I've got to visit my parole officer every week." So that was good, she was a really good peer educator. Other things happened where she couldn't be in the group any more‹ she had too many responsibilities coming on her. But those are the best peer educators. But in she was respected because she was on the in-crowd in the school. Well, they, "Oh such-and-such, she's cool, and everything." So she was a beautiful peer educator. (To Takeah) Takeah, she's [Takeah] a good role model. She's got problems with the books sometimes, she's got Senioritis real bad right now...
[End of relevant interview
1. The videotape, "Our Voices: Teenage Opinions on Sexuality" is available, and will be donated to the Women's Studies Program once this project is completed.
2. Misspelled, but I can only take my best guess.
3. Personal observation: I don't like being called "Mr. Propes."
4. If further explanation is needed: The process is sometimes called "House Arrest." The person has an electronic monitoring device attached to their arm or leg, and cannot remove it. They must adhere to a strict schedule or curfew or be in violation of their parole.