On Wednesday juniors and seniors each had an assembly with guest speaker Ty Sells.

Sells is the director of speaker services for the organization Youth to Youth International and won the he annual speaker for the LHS Juniors and Seniors took place in the auditorium, where a new speaker brought a “new way” of talking about substances and ways of life.  According to the speaker’s website, “in 2012, Ty was awarded the “Prevention Innovator of the Year” Award by the Ohio Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services (formerly ODADAS) for his development of creative prevention trainings and consultation with schools and organizations across the state.” 

Sells’ approach was significantly different from most people who speak about the dangers of drug abuse. In his own words, he said  “I don’t tell you a lot of scary stories about people dying”, but instead he tried to be honest with the audience and deal with the subjects with humor.

Sells has been out to multiple schools in the area to talk about how the youth deal with struggles like anxiety, stress, fitting in, and  substance abuse.

Throughout the speech he took multiple examples from his own life, as he tried to get his point across about “It’s okay to make mistakes or do embarrassing things, everybody does it”.

He reinforced this with videos caught by his ring camera of himself falling on his porch.

A big part of his speech included the subject of marijuana, where he asked the audience to try and come up with ways they believed marijuana was better than other drugs. Then he briefed them on the “common misconceptions” with a power point.

The assembly came just a few weeks before the seniors and juniors will have their proms, as a reminder for everybody to stay safe and make good choices.

Alongside Sells, Principal Dr. Joshua Romano and the School Resource Officer Eljin Vasquez briefly talked to the students about expectations for prom. 

The LHS senior prom will be on May 6 at Wachusett Mountain, and the LHS junior prom will be the week after on May 13 at the Chocksett Inn.