Once a month Corona del Mar High School hosts Student Voices to give students the opportunity to voice their opinions on different issues the student body experiences. The topic of choice will last two sessions, the first session being used to brainstorm and pinpoint specific issues surrounding the topic and then the second session being used to come up with ways the student body can work together to help solve the issue or physical plans the students can put into place. The topic of the last two months for juniors and seniors was competition and pressure. The meeting on February 8th was the second session of the topic and the students collaborated to brainstorm ways the student body can cultivate change individually or as a whole.

In the first session the students had decided that talking about test scores/grades, social media, and overscheduling were the major reasons for heightened feelings of competition and pressure both inside and outside school. Students felt that it would be useful to have more time in class to go over and ask questions about the test to help limit discussion outside of class and with that students would pledge to not talk about test scores outside of class. This would help reduce feelings of competition among students and normalize that it is ok to not want to talk about a test.

In terms of overscheduling, students said that it came mostly from taking classes they didn’t have time for or adding more extracurricular activities to their already full schedule. Students felt that it would be helpful to receive peer advice before they make their course selection and they hoped that finding students that had similar schedules and interests as them would help guide them when making their selections. They also felt that curating a course catalog with student given explanations and tips would be helpful when making class selections to help reduce the chance of overscheduling. Senior Makar Briggs was loudly spoken with many ideas during the meeting and he felt that “the discussion we had was very useful especially if our ideas get put into motion.”

Overall Student Voices is a great place for students who have ideas to collaborate and help curate a positive change in Corona del Mar high school. Junior Hannah Hykes took note of, “all the different types of students that got to share their perspectives” and thought it was “cool that we were able to come up with realistic solutions to the problems brought up.” Hopefully within the next couple months these plans will be implemented in one way or another and overall Student Voices was a very positive collaborative discussion of how the student body can make CdM a better campus.