Peer Resource, an elective that educates the community about social issues, has returned after two years. Spanish teacher Kelli McGiven serves as the teacher adviser to the class.

“The purpose of Peer Resource is to serve the social and emotional needs of the Tam community,” McGiven said. “The issues we will address are important, and students need to be well informed.” She also said the issues they talk about are chosen by the students, who run the class.

McGiven, who covered English teacher Abbey Levine’s Peer Mentoring class while Levine was on maternity leave, said she decided to lead the Peer Resource class because she enjoys working with students, and wants to help them become better leaders in their community.

“Our number one goal is to build a successful program, and to inspire and support students to make a positive difference on campus,” McGiven said.

The class, offered during fifth period, has 26 students, but only three boys.

“It’s was weird at first cause I was the only guy, but once the other two came it was cool,” senior Karim Shakur said.

“We are definitely trying to recruit more guys,” McGiven said, laughing.

McGiven has high expectations for the rest of the year. “We want to perform presentations to other classes and have educational events at lunch,” she said. “And we want to work with junior highs across Marin.”

“Right now, we are doing a lot of team bonding, and getting to know each other,” senior Natalie Fox, who is taking the class for the first time, said. “We want to put up posters around the school, but right now we are still in the planning phase.”

“We do lots of fun activities,” senior Stephanie Kim said. “We watch a lot of videos about social experiments.”

Senior Heather Cronb said Peer Resource is her favorite class. “We all did it because of Ms. McGiven,” she said.