Hartland High School Student Volunteers to Make Teen Center Possible

During a crossroads in her young life, 15-year-old Shoshana Reynolds says that having a teen center would have made a big impact on her middle school years.

“There’s nothing to do after school,” she said. “When I was in middle school I would stay after school and get yelled at and then we would walk around town and get in trouble and more trouble.”

The Hartland sophomore is the only teen member on the Hartland Enrichment and Recreation Organization (, a group of Hartland individuals working together to start a new  in the former Hartland township building. 

Shoshana is hoping to encourage the younger students to take advantage of the programs that the teen center is hoping to provide once it opens its doors in September.

“I think especially the ninth graders are going to need the tutoring,” she said. “If I could have just gone there and used the counselors and tutors, I would have been fine.” 

As the only teen represented on the board, Shoshana says it’s her job to give her perspective on ideas of how the teen center will look and how it will function.

“I look at it from a teenager’s point of view,” she said. “Is this cool or not?”

HERO president Kay Fountain says that having Shoshana volunteer her time as a board member is important for the success of the center. 

“She’s a bright young girl and her perspective is very valuable because she’s a teenager and she knows what kids what,” Fountain said. “This has to be teen driven." 

Hoping to give support in a safe and supervised environment is the goal, according to Fountain.

“We all makes mistakes but the key is hopefully you learn from them,” she said. “And that’s exactly what we’re trying to do with this teen center -- keeping kids on the right path.”

Teen center will fill a need, Soshana says

During her seventh grade year at , Shoshana said it was common practice for her group of friends to wander around the small village or on nearby trails for hours with no place to go.

Having a safe place to go and just “hang out” is the most important thing, according to Shoshana who says many of those friends from her middle school days are now using drugs.

“A lot of kids are on drugs because of their family and stuff, so if they would have gone there (teen center) and just talked to a counselor or something, maybe it would have helped,” Shoshana said. “I think it would have."