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03/09/2016 07:30 AMRemember when you were little and tried walking in your mother’s heels? Or lathered up and traced the same paths down your face, with a bladeless razor, that your father did when he shaved?
By the time we hit our teens, our parents are no longer the ones we imitate and no longer the biggest influence on our day-to-day lives. That job gets turned over to our peers.
And that’s why Katie Baisden, in her own high school days, helped start a group called REACT (Reality Even Affects Clinton Teens), whose mission it was—and still is—to make sure that ever-powerful peer influence is a positive one.
“When I went to Morgan, I was so involved with clubs it felt like I lived at the school,” says Katie, who is now a student at Central Connecticut State University as well as a part-time employee with Clinton’s Youth & Family Services Bureau (CYFSB). “By senior year I was in at least six clubs (that I can remember) and was either president or at least a board member of most of them. I was actually a founding member of REACT and have kept active at The Morgan School through the REACT program.”
REACT is a way for students to come together and have honest discussions about issues relevant to teens and to strengthen what are known as developmental assets—positive influences that lead to healthy, productive lives.
When Kelley Edwards, CYFSB’s coordinator for Partners in Community, started a REACT program at Jared Eliot School, she tapped Katie—who was still a high school student—to come out and help in the younger grades. Now that she’s in college, Katie has taken on a more official role with the town’s youth prevention programs.
“I technically have two jobs for the Town of Clinton,” she says. “For one of them, I am Kelley Edwards’s assistant to REACT, where I help her facilitate the club at Pierson, Eliot, and Morgan. I also help teach the 40 developmental assets and healthy decision-making skills. We realize that peers are one of the most influential forces in adolescent decision-making. If we could make positive peer influence even stronger than it is, the likelihood of our youth staying on a healthy track would increase.
“My other job is to collect data for all the youth programs that Clinton Youth & Family Services provides and organize it for the State of Connecticut. It’s called Research-Based Accountability, so my co-workers call me the RBA specialist.”
At Central, Katie is focusing on international studies with a concentration in European studies and a minor in German.
“Because I’ve transferred twice—I went to Eastern Connecticut State University and then Gateway Community College—I won’t be graduating on a four-year timeline, but I should be done by 2018. I’ll probably go straight for my master’s degree in either national security studies or international relations,” she says. “As far as a job goes, I’m considering a couple of different options. I would like to be a foreign service officer or diplomat, but I’m also thinking about being either a translator or intelligence analyst.”
Outside of class, Katie works in the CCSU mailroom, and off campus she spends much of her time in Clinton.
“I love my hometown so much. I have very deep roots here. Clinton has such a rich history that I think adds to the pride people have for our tiny town. My mother lives in Clinton with my younger brother, Byron, who actually just started college at Gateway. My dad, Betty, lives in New Haven with my step-parent, Mischa. My dad is actually a male-to-female transgender and is from Clinton, like the rest of the Baisden family. The Baisden family has been in Clinton for as long as Clinton has existed, which is partly why I have such strong ties to the town.”
From the time she was a kid, Katie says, this small-town girl was sociable and adventurous.
When she wasn’t playing with her brother, she recalls, “I liked to wander around and see new things, and that often got me into trouble, because I was either talking to strangers or managed to get lost somewhere without my parents—like in the National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C.
“I also (and this is still true today) loved learning more than anything else. I’m basically an information sponge, and my friends nicknamed me the ‘walking encyclopedia.’ I made my dad buy me the Encyclopedia Britannica when I was little so that I could read it for fun. I managed to teach myself how to read when I was four and haven’t stopped since. If there was a topic I heard about briefly that sounded interesting, there was sure to be a binder full of information on it by the end of the week—that’s how much I loved learning as a kid.”
While adolescents often do whatever it takes to fly under the radar and fit in, some march to the beat of a different drum.
“I had this strong need to be different from everyone else,” says Katie, “so throughout middle school and high school, I had some interesting hairstyles and hair colors.”
One of the biggest challenges Clinton teens face today, she believes, “is not feeling valued by the larger Clinton community. There are programs, like REACT, that get students to participate within the community. But I feel like there is not enough of an effort from the community to engage Clinton’s youth.
“I was really disappointed to hear that Husky Helper Day stopped happening, because I think that is the best possible way for the community and the teens of Clinton to get together and show that they care about one another,” she says.
Husky Helper Day was a spring event where students got out into the community; met the people who run nursery schools, churches, animal shelters, charitable organizations, and town departments and commissions, from the fire department to the land trust; and lent a hand sweeping, packing, weeding, building trails, and more. The event grew from 10 participating organizations in its first year, 2011, to more than three dozen in 2013. In 2015, Morgan students brought back Husky Helper Day, though time constraints meant participation was limited to seniors.
“There’s a stigma that teens in Clinton are this nasty bunch, and it isn’t helping our youth feel welcome in their own hometown. I know firsthand just how wonderful the kids of Clinton can be, not just because I was one of them, but because I now work with them,” she says. “I think that if there were more outlets for teens to show how great they really are, the stigma would die down and a feeling of value would arise.”
Building those developmental assets—which includes community support for its youth—is one of Katie’s goals, personally and professionally.
“I love that Clinton is a small town and that whenever anyone goes out for something, they are bound to run into someone they know.”
Katie also likes the fact that Clinton packs a variety of geographic features—including wooded areas, wetlands, and beaches—into a few square miles.
“People might be surprised to find out that although I’m a huge bookworm, I’m also very outdoorsy. I love hiking and swimming and am very invested in a couple of sports,” she says. “I was raised a huge Mets fan by my mother and grandfather. I also love German soccer and follow the team Bayern München.”
She’ll have a chance to catch both teams in action this month, as Bayern moves through the UEFA Champions League last 16 and the baseball season heats up.