Counselor works
to open outlooks
By Heidi Woerner
Lincoln High Advocate
Diane Leggiadro’s career doesn’t
leave her dealing with stoic adults
or the elevator music of an office
building.
Leggiadro, a peer-helping coun
selor at Lincoln High Scnool for 11
years, says the best thing about her
job is having a chance to work with
lively high school students.
“I just like young people,” she
says. “They’re just plain Tunny, so
straightforward and honest.”
She explains her job title this
way: “Peer-helping gives the per
mission to act on and be nice to
someone who isn’t ordinarily treated
nicely.”
Leggiadro, along with counselor
Marybeth Lehmanowsky, instructs
a helping skills class designed to
leach selected students peer-help
ing techniques.
“The purpose is to help make
LHS feel like a warm, accepting,
welcome place for students," she
says.
Students who lake the class learn
to broaden their perspectives and
become more aware of their peers,
leggiadro says.
“The goal is that everybody is at
least in as good a position or bettqr
after an encounter with a peer
helper," she says.
As both a counselor and a par
ent, Leggiadro says, the class is
helpful to her, loo. The opportu
nity to be around teenagers has
provided information that carries
over into her everyday life.
“I’m a lot more conscious about
the questions I ask," she says.
Leggiadro says she also gains a
special bond with her students as
the semester passes — a basic trust
takes place between students in
the class.
'l eaching the class, she says, is
Diane Leggiardro watches in amusement as a group in her peer help class acts out stereotypes at Lincoln High School. Leggiadro
says even she is stereotyped sometimes in the eyes of students, parents and staff.
“one of the most significant things
I do everyday."
Leggiadm says she thinks schools
should lake advantage or the posi
tive effects students have on one
another.
'Ihal belief, she says, is one reason
for her involvement in such pro
grams as student meditation, AIDS
peer education, Hnglish as a Sec
ond Language and an F.llioll school
mentor program
Leggiadro’s job stereotypes her
in the eyes of students, parents and
staff. She says they subscribe to the
set expectations of what counsel
ors are required to do, act or be
lieve.
Bui Leggiadro does noi.
“A counselor is nol where you
go jusi 10 gel things fixed," she .
says.
I Relit a Svoboda a Lincoln High student council president, sits In front of her school. Svoboda is a senior and plans to
attend UNL in the falL
Svoboda
Continued from Page 7
This also is the way to end other
stereotypes, Svoboda says.
"You get rid of them,” she says, "by
talking about them and forcing people to
be aware.”
Svoboda says people in general are
judging less in terms of stereotypes be
cause they just don’t fit anymore.
“People just don’t fit stereotypes,’’ she
says. “At LHS, there are 2,200 people
leading 2,200 different lives.”
Hut she says she thinks at a smaller
school, where everyone knows each other,
it might be easier to stereotype.
Not that stereotypes are not non-exis
tent at Lincoln High — but Svoboda says
they’re lessening.
“There are no barriers to stereotypes,”
she says. “It’s just a social thing ”
A social thing that Svoboda may be
able to change as she pursues a career in
government.
She plans to attend the University of
Nebraska-Lincoln and major in political
science or international relations.
“That’s kind of up my alley.”