It’s a big leap from the days of middle school dances and having an hour of homework a night to rally days and writing the I-search. Fortunately for the soon-to-be high schoolers and underclassmen, Piedmont has created leadership programs to help students with the transition.

The Wellness Center leadership programs are available to high school students as leadership opportunities and allow these students to get involved, enhance leadership skills and prepare them for high school and beyond.

“Students become ambassadors for their schools by taking a stand to work towards promoting school climate,” said Wellness Center Director Ting Hsu Engleman.

These programs not only affect the middle schoolers and underclassmen high school students, but also the leaders in the programs as well.

“Sharing my experience with them was very fulfilling and rewarding,” former YED senior Sutter Kraetzer said.

Youth Educators, also known as YEDs, is a program in which juniors focus their efforts toward informing eighth graders about aspects of the high school experience, such as drugs, alcohol and decision-making.

“Everyone in YEDs gets super close. A huge part of YEDs to trust each other and trust is a huge aspect of the program and that can be somewhat rare in the high school experience,” Kraetzer said.

As Youth Educators, juniors are expected to set an example by taking a pledge that they will refrain from drinking alcohol during the three months they are participating in the program.

Another program, Peer Advisors, is available to all high school upperclassmen and focuses on social psychology classes for sophomores to discuss relationships, stress and substance abuse.

“It creates a cool relationship between upperclassmen and underclassmen,” Peer Advisor senior Audrey Meyersieck said.

Meyersieck also said that being a Peer Advisor helps build confidence about speaking in front of groups and builds collaboration skills when working in groups to come up with lesson plans.

“It forces you to be open about yourself in front of an entire class,” Meyersieck said.

Peer Mediation is somewhat different from Youth Educators and Peer Advisors in that only Piedmont Middle School seventh graders can apply to be Peer Mediators.

Students that apply and are chosen to be Mediators receive two-day training sessions where they learn valuable skills that allow them to help classmates with their conflicts.

“We learned a lot about communication skills and the psychology of an argument and it’s definitely helped in real life too,” Peer Mediator sophomore Mira Tellegen said.

As high schoolers, Peer Mediators train the upcoming Mediators at Piedmont Middle School. These students take two days off from their normal class schedule to work with and train the middle school students.

“It’s nice to get to know the middle schoolers and watch them grow each year,” Tellegan said.

Ground Crew is a leadership program for sophomores, juniors and seniors. Ground Crew members are trained to participate at freshman orientation and reach out to freshmen and new students so that the transition between middle school and high school will feel less overwhelming.

Ground Crew Members maintain contact with their freshmen groups throughout the school year by taking time to get to know them and regularly check in with them.

“Piedmont has a very stratified high school system where all the grades are very separated and through different activities outside of ground crew, like sports, I’ve found that it’s nice to have those grades mesh and kind of break that stratified system,” said Ground Crew Member senior Claire Altieri.