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Photo by Sam Yu
Gov. Thomas Johnson High School grad Rachel Gardner helped developed the video "Frederick County Teens Talking to Frederick County Teens about HIV." |
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Ninth grade is the last year Frederick County students take health class, and therefore the last year they learn about preventing the spread of HIV and AIDS, at least in the classroom.Until last fall, their main curriculum was a video produced in the early 1990s. Rachel Gardner, who graduated from Gov. Thomas Johnson High School in 2005, had an opportunity to change that. Gardner helped develop a new video, "Frederick County Teens Talking to Frederick County Teens about HIV," as part of her internship with the Frederick County Health Department last summer. Gardner is now a senior at Brandeis University in Waltham, Mass., studying biology and public health. Her video was inspired by an HIV education assembly at Urbana High School at the end of the 2007 school year. The first event of its kind in Frederick County Public Schools, it was organized by Adam Lehar as part of his senior project and featured an HIV-positive speaker from Frederick . County school board members said they wished such a program could reach more local high school students. The school board also supported Gardner's proposal for a new video. Curriculum specialists volunteered the FCPS camera crew and high school drama teachers recommended students to act in the film. Gardner and Debbie Anne, the HIV/AIDS program supervisor at the health department, wrote the script and organized the filming. The first segment shows a group of students, including Gardner and Lehar, sitting in a living room setting discussing myths, facts and questions about HIV and AIDS. Though obviously scripted, the segment shows students that the disease is a real concern in Frederick County and not just "out there somewhere," Anne said. The other two segments are interviews with two HIV-positive women who live in Frederick . The personal stories really hit home with students, Anne said. "The kids love the interviews; that's the part that really sells the message." The video was approved by the school board's family life advisory and curriculum development committees, and was adopted in November as part of the ninth grade curriculum. Anne said the health department would like to keep the video fresh by refilming every few years. Gardner herself is certified to perform HIV testing, and said she is interested in medical research but isn't sure what she'll do after graduating from Brandeis. She said a career in public health is an option.
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