Wrong place, wrong time.
That’s how students Jayvonte Hughes, Jr., and Jahil Latchison describe the deaths of their close friends in a recent episode of their school’s podcast, .
“My friend is gone now,” Latchison said. “I feel like I probably could have given him that extra, ‘Hey, stay away from these guys,’ because that’s the real reason he was killed. He was in the wrong place, at the wrong time. I told him once they weren’t the right people to be around.”
For Hughes, it was the death of his older cousin, who was shot and killed in a car with her boyfriend.
“It just happens so often. You can just be minding your own business and still become a victim to gun violence,” Hughes said. “I think my cousin’s death really opened my eyes and really pushed me to want to do this.”
The “this” he is referring to is his role as a student leader addressing preventable gun violence through the school’s Student Ambassador Program and its partnership with Educators for Gun Safety. As part of this initiative, CPA student ambassadors are working to foster open conversations about gun safety within their school community, while also collaborating with students from other area schools to advocate for meaningful change.Their efforts reflect the Academy’s commitment to shape a dialogue centered on solutions, awareness, and action in their school and across the ѿý region.
A moderated student panel hosted by Confluence and SLPS provided the basis for the EGS program, which was initially launched by the Academy in the spring of 2022. The middle-through-high school program has been adapted to include lessons on gun facts, peer influences, dangerous situations, refusal skills, trusted adults, solutions and interventions, and life goals. The community researched-based curriculum also educates families on how to converse on the topic of gun safety.
Dr. Leslie Muhammad, director of student services and parent involvement at Confluence, is the host of Confluence Conversations. Joining her and the students is Dr. Cierra Wourman, a lead college and career counselor for Confluence. Wourman works with the student ambassadors and reflected on her exposure to gun violence when she first joined the school in 2016.
“I was new to the field, and no one prepared me for some of the community violence that I had to face as an educator,” she said. “They always say like, ‘Oh, you know, you have graduation, you have prom and you have eighth grade promotion.’ But when I experienced going to five funerals in one summer for students under the age of 15, and they were my scholars from previous years, that was really heavy. And then to realize that the safest place for them, for those students, was school.”
Wourman said the critical component of the ESG partnership is to ensure that students and educators work collaboratively to make sure the city of ѿý finds a way to provide a safe and inclusive environment for all students.
“So, yes, the program did start at the Academy, but we definitely are branching out to other schools so we can all get on the same page as it pertains to what safety really looks like when it comes to firearms,” Wourman said.
Latchison enjoys being an ambassador for the program because “from a student perspective, I feel like — adults, they always downplay how stuff can happen or automatically think that it’s happening because of a certain reason. Our school is leaning on us for feedback as ambassadors; we can now find other reasons. Because we’re the same age (as these students) and think like them, we know how they act and we can share that knowledge with the adults.”
Hughes agreed. “Gun violence has been a problem for some time now, and in my opinion, legislators in charge are really focused on trying to push laws to fix it when I think we should focus on educating our young people on the importance of it, too. I think that’s where it starts and that’s why I like being part of this program.”
Not only part of the program, but part of the solution.
To listen to Confluence Conversations podcast episodes, .
Learn more about Confluence Academies’ partnership with ESG and other organizations by visiting .
