Chesapeake Hopes To Build Relationships With Community Ambassador Position

Chesapeake High School students have a new in-school resource: community ambassador Jay Offer.

A community ambassador provides additional support to students dealing with personal struggles - whether in or out of the school setting - that are affecting their ability to perform well in school.

“My daily responsibility, first of all, is to provide an additional layer of support to the students,” Offer said. “Every child that attends Chesapeake has access to me, and I have the resources [and] the ability to support all of them.”

There is a group of students he works with that felt hopeless, Offer said.

“They felt that the year had been lost, and my job was to dig and dig and dig until I could find that way to help them find success,” Offer said.

Offer can step in before a situation escalates.

“When you’re in high school and you’re being held accountable, you think the ones who are holding you accountable are being mean, but what the students don’t see is the frustration that administrators have when the only choice they have to resolve an issue is through [disciplinary action],” Offer said. “There’s where I become a great benefit to them because I can intercede and help to defuse a situation before [disciplinary action] is necessary.”

The community ambassador position was first introduced at Annapolis High School, and then at North County High School. Chesapeake High School is the third school in the Anne Arundel County Public Schools system to have a community ambassador.

When Offer first started in mid-April, he worked with Principal Stephen Gorski to identify 21 students whom Offer is “officially assigned” to, meaning he monitors their grades and class attendance.

“Many of my students don’t even come in this room,” Offer said. “I monitor them through our school system to see that they’re attending classes, how they’re doing with their grades. If I see something that concerns me, I’ll reach out to them.”

Offer, a pastor at the Harvest Crusades Ministry, looks at the position as a mentorship role.

“I thought that it would be harder to connect to some of the students,” Offer said. “The truth of the matter is they want somebody to connect in the way that the community ambassador is connecting with the students. They needed it.”

The community ambassador was brought in to build and work with the student body to repair some of the damage done over the last few months, Gorski said. The school also created a student equity team.

“Although we’d like to say we have a very positive climate, there are a lot of hidden things or repressed things that are not talked about, and we feel it’s important to make sure that we’re having those conversations,” Gorski said. “If we don’t want this to come about again, we have to make sure we have a sustainable effort that is based on education and helps people get to know each other better.”

Because Offer is not part of the administration, Gorski highlighted the different relationship Offer can build with students.

“I think relationships are key, and sometimes it takes just finding that person that you can have a positive relationship with that can be the tide turner for a student who’s a struggling learner or dealing with some issues,” Gorski said.