School counselors sponsored a healthy relationship talk for the high school girls at both the Galena Interior Learning Academy (GILA) auditorium and Sidney Huntington School (SHS) little gym on March 15 during the Saturday school day.

Before the healthy relationship talk, we asked GILA counselor Jana Rider what she and SHS counselor Maria Riedel would like to accomplish through these meetings.

Ms. Rider had said that the three things they would be focusing on would be looking at the warning signs of an unhealthy relationship, infatuation vs. love (a compare and contrast between the two), and the Dating Bill of Rights (the rights you have in a relationship).

A lot of the presentation was about self-empowerment and situational awareness in a relationship and knowing the danger zone in a relationship.

“[Students learned] what is and what is not a healthy relationship,” said Ms. Rider, adding that the counselors wanted to touch base with the female students on this subject.

“We see a lot of unhealthy relationships,” she said.

Ms. Rider said the goal of the meeting was to help establish a better understanding of relationships and to provide teenage girls with information so they’ll be capable of recognizing an unhealthy relationship.

It was a great opportunity. Quite a few girls attended and received several handouts with bullet points on the main ideas, while Ms. Rider and Ms. Reidel talked to the crowd.

Originally, the meeting was planned to be a small piece at the end of the sex ed night for ladies that Galena’s Dr. Tamera Huntington had done, but here was not enough time and the counselors wanted to be able to speak of it in more depth.

Hopefully the girls of GILA and SHS now know a few more things about the dating world and enable them to identify an unhealthy or abusive relationship.