Published: March 19, 2008 09:59 pm      

Chamber program helps students make good CHOICES

When the freshmen students at Huntsville High School walked into their history and world geography classes on Tuesday and Wednesday, they didn’t find their regular teachers and they didn’t learn their regular lessons.

Instead, they were faced with community leaders from a variety of businesses and organizations in Walker County who were there to discuss the importance of choices.

During the two-day CHOICES program, which was organized by the Chamber of Commerce, the community leaders spent approximately an hour and a half with the freshman classes discussing the role even the smallest choices can play in the course of their lives.

“With our program this year, we were hoping to talk to all freshmen students in the Walker County school districts including those in New Waverly,” said Jacki Dawson, owner of Mr. Gatti’s Pizza. “We were hoping to let them know that, as community leaders, we care about them.

“We want them to understand that every single choice they make has a consequence; it might be good and it might be bad, but there is always a consequence.”

Kimm Thomas, Huntsville-Walker County Chamber of Commerce vice president, said the presentations made during the program focused on encouraging the students to make life decisions at an early stage which would have long-term, positive affects.

“If they’ll learn self-discipline now, they’ll make better choices,” she said. “With better choices now, they’ll end up making better decisions later on life, and that’s what we’re going for today.”

Dawson said a total of 20 community leaders — who volunteered both to appear in the classrooms and to participate in program training — made presentations to the students.

The group included representatives from the Walker County Sheriff’s Department, Sam Houston State University, the Huntsville Police Department, the City of Huntsville and several local businesses.

“In my presentations, I’ve talked to the students about some of the things they have choices about and some of the things they don’t,” said volunteer speaker Pat Camfield, Wiesner of Huntsville general manager. “They can’t choose who their parents are or where they were born, but they do have a choice about how to present themselves and about their attitude.”

Camfield said his class discussed the amounts of free time available to students in a typical week and how much time they really had available to study.

“My particular class had 58 hours of free time a week, and we talked about how, even if they were to spend two hours a day doing homework, they would still have over 40 hours a week of spare time,” he said.

Camfield said the classes also discussed the types of jobs students could be eligible for with various levels of education.

“I think a lot of this information will absolutely help some of these kids, because they don’t have a clue,” he said. “There’s a couple of students in there who are on the right track, but I think there’s definitely a need for classes like this today.”

In the future, Dawson said the goal for the program is to reach every seventh and eighth grade student in Walker County.

“Our goal for next year is to talk to over 50 classes,” she said. “There’s a financial commitment of $130 a class, so we’ll definitely be looking for sponsors, but that’s our goal as of right now.”