Spotlight on campus aides

Students see them in the parking lot before school directing traffic. During passing period, they may be seen helping the occasional injured student to class. For the lunch period, they are out in the halls, watchful of general activity. These individuals are the campus aides here at Aragon High School. Almost everyone has observed or interacted with them at one point or another, but few are familiar with who they are or what they do on a day to day basis.

Throughout the day, the campus aides undertake a wide variety of tasks. “We enforce the school regulations and the kids’ behavior,” says aide Tavita Finau.

This includes “enforcing in the morning that parents will only drop off their kids on the Aragon white zone, as well as monitoring student activity and behavior on campus. We monitor visitors on campus, and supervise students during passing time or during lunch time.”

Fellow aide Hosea Patton agrees with this, saying, “Our role is basically the safety and security of the campus; making sure that all the rules and regulations are followed – you know, make sure the students feel safe, comfortable.”

“When teachers see things, they’ll intervene,” says Patton. “They’ll call us if they’re not comfortable intervening and tell us what the situation may have been. Also, kids are very aware and on top of things, so if they see something or hear something that we don’t have any knowledge about, they will usually whisper it to us if they’re comfortable talking to us, saying that something might happen later on after school or something may have happened during school.”

Aide Gabe Garcia echoes Patton and Finau’s thoughts, saying, “This is your school. We’re here for your safety, protection, security.”

“It’s almost the Big Brother program, kind of,” says Garcia. “Because we walk around talking to people. So you know, if there’s a guy that plays football, or there’s one that doesn’t. We talk to everyone. We talk to anyone from the chess club, to the football team or math club.”

Thus, while it may seem that their duty is strictly limited to acting as the security force here at Aragon, their responsibilities extend beyond simply that of protectorate. For many, they act as a mentor.

As Patton said, “For me personally, and I’m sure along with Dave and Gabe, [the best part] is just building the relationships with the students. That’s just what I’ve done since I’ve graduated from college: working with students in some aspect or another. There were a couple of girls on the basketball team. They were captains and star players but they were having some issues . . . with some of their teammates, and they didn’t know how to reach out to them. My advice to them was to simply put it out there, because if you think [the issue] is going to be detrimental to the team and you address it at the beginning, then you get it solved. It doesn’t become a problem midway or at the end of the season, when it really counts.”

Thus, for the campus aides, it’s not only about making sure that Aragon High School is kept safe and secure; they play an integral role with the academic faculty in the lives of many Aragon students as source of guidance in the maturation into adulthood.

Their interaction with students is in no way limited to issues of “school policy regulation.” For some, it extends into the very process of counseling, advising and just being an adult that an adolescent can talk to.