As Ashley Courmier holds a small Broncos football standing in a circle of 10 eighth-grade girls and a Lakewood police victim’s advocate, she tells the students she’s going to start a phrase and when she tosses the football to someone, they’re going to finish it and pass to another girl.
She starts with “friends are…” and passes the ball. The responses vary: “Enthusiastic,” “nice,” “annoying,” “complicated.” Once everyone has given an answer, the Creighton Middle School counselor starts another round. This time starting with “parents can be…” Later on, itap “boys are…”
Courmier and Lakewood police victim’s advocate Aubrie Banning are leading the Girls Circle program April 12 at Creighton, which is geared toward 10 eighth-grade and 10 seventh-grade girls who the school has identified as being in need of some extra support at school.
“We look for girls who don’t have peer support, have a difficult times making friends, alcohol or drug abuse in their lives or families’ lives and low self-esteem,” Courmier said.
The girls meet Wednesdays after school, have snacks — cookies, chips and soda — and then start with some games to get the conversation started. The students can also talk about any issues they are having either at school or at home. The hope is that the students feel comfortable enough to share whatever is happening in their lives, whether itap something like having their phone taken away by their parents, bullying or even abuse.
Lakewood police school resource officer Cindy Coon started the Girls Circle at both Creighton and Dunstan middle schools about six years ago after she said she had been seeing a lot of incidents involving girls that warranted her attention such as cyberbullying and fist-fights. Coon wanted to see whether she could stop incidents before they happened.
“I had so much girl-drama stuff that didn’t rise to level of criminal, or it did — but it didn’t make sense to put them in the system,” she said.
Coon attended a training program in Glenwood Springs and later ran programs at the two middle schools and worked with a counselor to identify girls to be part of the program. Girls would be approached individually and had the option of not participating, but she said most would try it out. Coon would run a seventh-grade program one year and an eighth-grade program the next with a new group of girls.
“I brought it to my school to help me address my workload. Anyone can do it, anyone who has a passion for girls can do it,” she said. “I’m just in a capacity where the principal trusted me to try it.”
Two years ago, when Coon decided she could no longer run the program, she found two victim’s advocates — Banning and Hope Hawn — who were willing to take over, which allowed Creighton to have both seventh- and eighth-grade programs in the same year. Dunstan didn’t continue the program this year. that is run by probation officers.
“Sometimes a lot of people we meet with are at an extremely high point of crisis, so to work with the girls and have these positive interactions is my favorite part of the week,” Banning said.
Creighton eighth-grader Bella Snow is in the program and said she had a lot of problems with friends and also experienced drama at home. Since joining the group, she feels like school has improved for her, and she’s become better friends with the girls in the group.
“I like everyone in the group and how open we can be with each other and the activities we do,” Snow said. “I feel like I’m much more self-confident, and I have more friends I can go to when I’m having a hard time.”
Fellow Creighton eighth-grader Lilly Guerrero was having problems with classmates and bullying. She said since joining the group, the bullying has stopped because she started standing up for herself. She was reluctant to join at first but is glad she did.
“I was iffy because I’m not good about talking about my feelings, but I decided to show up and so we all came and I had a lot of fun and bonded with a lot of the girls,” she said.
The seventh-grade girls do similar activities and last week made T-shirts, each choosing an empowering statement to put on the front.
Creighton social-emotional learning specialist Samantha Gault runs the seventh-grade program with Hawn and said she feels seventh grade is an important age to get through to girls as itap just one year after elementary school and many struggle with the transition.
“Particularly for the seventh-grade girls, the transition from elementary school to middle school is tough,” she said. “They’re learning how to interact with middle school girls. Itap a different environment.”
Coon has seen many success stories in her years running the program and will often have girls who have graduated come back and visit.
“I love it because I knew they had it in them, I just had to show them,” she said. “To see them come back, itap unexplainable. I’m proud of them.”