Shawsheen Student Group Helps with Important Video Project

Courtesy Photo: Members of the Shawsheen Teen Dating Violence Awareness group pose for a photo with District Attorney Marian Ryan on April 7 at the Showcase Cinema in Woburn.

BILLERICA, MA - Members of the Shawsheen Valley Technical High School’s Teen Dating Violence Awareness group are quick to point out, their responsibilities go far beyond the time they spend together at school.

Almost 20 students gather regularly at the school and discuss what they feel is an important topic.

“We’re very serious about it,” said senior Michael Moriconi of Billerica. “Each of us has been touched by it in our own way.”

Senior Sarah King of Wilmington said that student-committees like this are important as a way for students to help their peers at a time when teenagers don’t always defer to their parents for advice.

“Kids can rebel against their parents,” King said. “Also, relationships (when our parents were growing up) were much different than they are now.”

Shawsheen’s TDVA group has been busy as of late with some exciting projects.

On Monday, April 11, King and Moriconi appeared with District Attorney Marian Ryan on a local cable television show in Belmont, discussing a recent video premiere that involved students from Shawsheen and several other schools on April 7 at the Showcase Cinemas in Woburn.

There, five short videos were unveiled as part of a project designed to better understand teen dating in a modern world. The film series is called Teen Dating A to Generation Z: A Guide to Going Out, Breaking Up and Everything in Between.

The Middlesex Partnerships for Youth created the series through a generous contribution from Proskauer Rose LLP.

Shawsheen students participated in the filming and production of two of the videos. One, titled “It’s not me, it’s you – how to break up” was a 90-second spot giving advice on how to end an abusive relationship. The other, called “Abuse – Is that was this is?” talks about how to identify being in an abusive relationship.

The Shawsheen students attended the premiere and saw themselves and their work on a big movie screen.

“The students were really excited,” said Christine Tobin, a teacher at Shawsheen at the TDVA advisor at the school.

“It was really cool,” said Moriconi.

King was quick to insist that all of the group’s members contributed whether they appeared in the videos or not.

“It was a collaborative effort,” she said. “Even the freshmen and sophomores had a huge part in it. Everyone did. We’re trying to get more students to participate.”

Tobin said the videos from the project will be played at the Woburn theater before movie previews in the near future.