Annual event targets Floyd County 9th graders

by Megan Reed

ROME, Ga.—The Floyd County Teen Maze hosted each year by the Rome-Floyd County Commission on Children and Youth aims to teach local high school students about the right choices to make to avoid potentially dangerous or undesirable situations.

Statistics gathered by Georgia Family Connection

About 1,300 high school freshmen participate each year in the event, which is held in the fall at the Coosa Valley Fairgrounds. Students from both private and public high schools take a field trip during the school day to attend, and parents must approve their child’s participation. The program will be in its fourth year in 2015; the maze is scheduled for the last week of October.

“The focus of that effort, which is once a year and targets 9^th-graders, is to show them through experiential education what some of the issues are that they may face that may keep them from graduating high school,” said Carol Willis, executive director of the commission. 

Teens at the event navigate a life-sized game board, where they learn about situations they may face during their teen years, such as attending a party or being offered drugs. They then explore the possible outcomes of making different choices in those situations.

Angie Robinson, Floyd County Health Department

“Kids pick scripts at different stations, starting with a date, and they don’t get to choose, they just pick—and it will either say yes, you decided to have sex, or no, you decided not to,” said Angie Robinson, youth development coordinator for the Floyd County Health Department, who also helps plan the maze. “Some of the scripts are actually positive consequences, so they get to see both. But those consequences—they may get pregnant, they may get an STD, those that drink or drive or do drugs may wind up in jail, some may have drank and drive and died so they go to the funeral home.”

Robinson said the simulation ends with about 80% of students being told they graduated high school based on the choices they made in the maze, or about the same percentage (83%) that graduated high school in Floyd County last year.