Diamond Bar High School students who attended this semester’s DB Forum said that they came out of the school’s gymnasium on March 3 with a newfound knowledge of crucial life-skills.

The biannual event focuses on leadership and exploring social hardships among students through different activities like Healthy Boundaries, where students ask certain questions and determine if they are appropriate or not. 

Junior peer counseling member Melissa Guerrero Harper went to DB Forum to support her friends. 

“Well, we mostly did communication exercises and we tried opening up more,” she said via Instagram. “We played games like drawing logos, playing with beach balls and we did one with two chairs and we had to walk over it with various rules; it was a way where we had to work as a group together.”

Among the various activities at the event, Harper said sharing personal statements was her favorite because it made other people relatable, since some students are dealing with the same problems.

According to Harper, one activity that everyone liked was sharing personal statements. The staff said statements like “my parents are divorced,” and if the statement applied to some of the students, they crossed a line.

Another activity Harper enjoyed was when attendees created a logo for their team, which needed a deep meaning and could only go with certain colors. 

Wellness Center adviser Sandy Davis said that she is retiring at the end of the school year, so this event was her last one.

“I feel so grateful that I thoroughly enjoyed a long career in education as a teacher, coach, advisor and counselor that challenged me to continually grow to provide my best to my students and colleagues,” she said.

“Some people got emotional,” Harper said. “But they gave everyone shout-outs and it was pretty cool.” 

Junior Kimberly Dawud expressed how lucky she felt she was to be an assistant at DB Forum.

“I was able to endure and understand the process of planning DB Forum,” she said.  “We spent a lot of time after school going through the activities and such.”

The event helped Dawud to become familiar with organizing and cooperating with others to hold events.

“I was able to learn about my personal boundaries, my implicit biases and teamwork with activities such as the Solo Cup Challenge, [and] I just knew it would be a wonderful experience,” she said.

Sophomore Rachel Mar enjoyed learning about healthy boundaries.

“It [the activity] made me feel more aware about my own personal boundaries,” she said.

All three students plan to attend DB Forum next year, and Harper hopes to be a facilitator by then.

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