By Scott Morgan
Ewing sisters grow personally while mentoring others
For Renata Stankowska, her older sister, Magdalena, isn’t only a hero, she’s also a role model.
Being a role model is an important thing for the two sisters, and they both have had the opportunity to do just that thanks to their service in an area social services organization.
The Stankowskas are two of a number of area students who have been working as counselors in the PEERS program, run by the Trenton-based Millhill Child & Family Development center.
Millhill, founded in 1971, instructs Mercer County youth about the perils that they and their counterparts face on the road to adulthood.
Millhill’s mission is to make Trenton, and the world in general, a better place through education and outreach.
One of its flagship endeavors is the PEERS program, which stands for Performing, Educating & Engaging about Responsible Strategies.
Magdalena, who graduated as valedictorian for Ewing High School in June, just may be PEERS’s flagship graduate. She finished her work at Millhill during the summer, and is now in her first year at Princeton University — from which she received a full scholarship.
Magdalena first came to the United States at age 10, when her parents immigrated here from Poland. Her parents set about trying to make a new life in America the same way most other immigrants who speak little English do — by working hard jobs for mediocre money and hoping their children make good on the promise of the American dream.
She never even considered not going for that dream. Along the way, she got involved in PEERS, as well as the Princeton University Preparatory Program (a program for high-achieving, low-income students) in mid-high school. To her astonishment she was accepted at Princeton, where she is studying sociology.
Renata, a 15-year-old sophomore at Ewing High School, joined PEERS in 2012 as an eighth-grader. She said that during her two years in the program, she has seen herself grow into a much more aware and confident young lady.
“I got to see myself grow as a person, from starting off as the youngest and quietest, to now not being nearly as nervous presenting,” she said. The most rewarding thing about being in PEERS, she said, is “seeing myself, as well as the people we talk to, actually get something out of our workshops.”
It is impossible to consider Renata’s involvement in PEERS without considering that of her older sister.
“She joined before me and knew a couple of people who were already a part of it,” Renata said. “But also, I wanted to be a part of something bigger, a program, a group or something that would put me in a new light. I wasn’t necessarily thinking about college at the time, I was more concerned about my upcoming high school life.”
Renata admits freely that Magdalena remains a lighthouse toward what she wants to be as a person.
“In my eyes Magda is perfect,” Renata says. “And if perfection isn’t tough to follow, then I don’t know what is.”
This tough-to-follow act, however, is a natural motivator for Renata. “Please don’t get me wrong, I am more than happy for her and thrilled to have a role model like her,” she said of her big sister. “She guides me to a lot of opportunities and shows me how they will become pathways to my success, but without my own footprints I won’t get anywhere. That’s the way I look at it. Without Magda I know I would be a completely different person, I am more than positive I wouldn’t be involved in the things that I am, and I wouldn’t be as happy as I am to have a sister like her.”
Renata, who plays tennis and runs track at Ewing High School, also participates in the Drama Club, Key Club and choir. Like her sister, she is also participating in the Princeton University Preparatory Program.
Renata said she plans to attend college that after graduating, but isn’t sure where yet. “At the moment I don’t have a plan where I would like to go, but I would like to do something with sociology/social work,” she said. “This idea was actually triggered by PEERS and seeing my boss, (PEERS coordinator) Andre Monday, do what he does.”
Known to many of the PEERS kids as “Papa,” Monday oversees the performances and development of educational programs on a day-to-day basis.
“PEERS shined a light on what people do with the community, and it really helped me realize that I don’t have to sit behind a computer the rest of my life, or be stuck in a cubical. I can actually physically do something for a community of people,” Renata said.
Also currently in the program along with Renata is Milan Williams, a 14-year-old from Hamilton who just joined the program this year.
She said she became involved because she wants to make the community better. Milan heard of PEERS through an aunt who works in Millhill and applied (as do all interested kids) through an interview process that is thorough but almost always leads to acceptance into the program.
Already, Milan says she is seeing a better world and is becoming more knowledgeable about it. “If people need help, “ she said, “what can we do to help?”
In talking about the history of PEERS, Monday said that the program came about through a long trial and error until Millhill realized that the best way to reach kids about the dangers of gangs, violence, drugs, bullying, and all manner of trouble, is peer-to-peer education.
In a nutshell, the kids involved in PEERS (ages 13-18) visit schools, churches, and pretty much anywhere else that wants them, to perform skits, conduct interactive workshops, and hold Q&A sessions with other kids facing common challenges.
PEERS events depict how teens think, feel, react, and make decisions during times of conflict through thought-provoking and age-appropriate performances. At the conclusion of each skit PEERS educators use interactive and educational activities to conduct small group discussions crafted to initiate dialogue, explore and expand values and beliefs, and create an exchange of ideas.
It’s part teaching, part acting, and part pointing out the elephants in the room, said Monday, a resident of Trenton. There is, after all, a lot of common ground among Mercer County’s younger residents regarding the hazards of the world outside, and this, said Monday, is a main reason why the peer-to-peer angle works out so much better than adults going in and giving kids yet another lecture on the dangers of saying yes to the wrong questions.
“The meat of the program is the one-on-one counseling,” said Monday, himself a licensed social worker who holds his MSW from Rutgers University and his bachelor’s in social sciences from Thomas Edison State College. Monday began his career with Millhill in 2001 as a one-on-one teaching assistant, working with special needs children. He soon became an Abbott group teacher at Trenton Head Start.
PEERS teaches some of the more practical and far-reaching skills to its educators to help them attain their own professional dreams — public speaking, interpersonal communication, and presentation. On top of that, the programs the educators help put together and present cover such topics as financial literacy, conflict resolution, and college preparation, which, of course teaches them things they need to know.
“There are a lot of life skills that we work through with the groups,” Monday says. “You’re not by yourself, your with the group.”
Steven Ikegwu, a Rutgers freshman who completed his time with PEERS after he graduated from Ewing High School last summer, said PEERS has had a big impact on his life.
Ikegwu, now 18, is to a large degree following in Papa Monday’s footsteps and studying psychology in New Brunswick. Like his role model, Ikegwu wants to help those who need a hand and don’t understand or know the resources they have within reach.
The main thing Ikegwu took from his time in PEERS is his new vantage point. “I have a more open-minded perspective in life,” he said. This perspective comes from having crossed the border into the troubled capital city and looking around at the cinders of a socio-economic system that churns out more tabloid headlines than international ambassadors.
Having come from humble beginnings — Ikegwu’s father is a security guard who works so much that Ikegwu and his three older brothers barely see him and his mother works at home with preschool kids — considers himself fortunate to have gone through PEERS and learned what he has to offer the world and himself. PEERS, he says often, is a family. And because of it he wants to give back.
For Magdalena, PEERS was a major contributor to where she is on her path to success.
“I would not have been able to accomplish as much as I did without my marvelous support system,” she said.
“Mr. Monday and the Trenton PEERS, as a whole, provided me with great support, loads of encouragement, and constant guidance. High school was a battle but I fought along people who never lost hope in me and now, together, we can celebrate the victory.”
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