WE tv Series "High School Confidential" - Inside the Lives of 12 Teenage Girls

All the Numbers Add Up to a Must-See Series for Parents of Teens

Twelve girls. One small town. Four grades of high school. Five hundred hours of footage. Eight emotional episodes.

It all adds up to what may be the most important and honest depiction of what teen girls face during adolescence in the first decade of the new millennium. And it makes for a powerful eight-hour series aptly named High School Confidential.

Executive producer Sharon Liese didn't set out to break new ground when she conceived the documentary and began filming in 2002. As the single mother of a 13-year-old daughter about to enter freshman year, Liese went looking for resources and material specific to the experiences of girls during the transition years of high school. Finding very few reality-based accounts of the challenges and changes girls face, Liese decided to document these four years herself, and convinced a high school in Overland Park, Kansas, to allow access to the school and its students.

To find girls willing to have their lives recorded over a four-year period, Liese invited incoming freshmen to apply. Forty girls submitted applications, 25 were interviewed, and a dozen were chosen to appear in High School Confidential.

For most of the 12 girls, we see their high school experiences condensed into an hour; most are featured in a single episode depicting four years of change, growth, loss, and emerging independence. Throughout eight programs, their stories are told individually or grouped together (with up to three per episode.)

Watching them grow from shy, innocent-looking freshmen through sophomore, junior and senior years, we see the stresses take their toll. We hear their frustrations, fears, hope, dreams, and disappointments. We watch as they learn to negotiate high school with greater confidence. And we feel their losses as intensely as they do through candid confessions, tears, and emotional breakdowns in the face of death, pregnancy, miscarriage, suicidal thoughts, and peer pressure.

Throughout the series, interviews with parents expose a sad truth - most are clueless about what goes on in their daughters' lives. By the end of high school, daughters and parents frequently come together; but the interviews remind me (as a mother of two teenage girls) never to be too smug about my daughters' lives and to realize that I - like most parents - probably will never see the full story of what goes on.

I've been watching the series with my 16 and 14-year-old daughters. And they've been intensely obsessed with each episode and with the girls' lives. Most painful for all of us was the story of Jessie, whose dreams of an acting career are threatened by her bouts of depression, alcohol and drug use, and pregnancy - all aspects of high school that initially terrified her as a freshman. (And the pain ins magnified by Jessie's mother, who struggles with her own issues and poor life choices that impact her daughter.)

Some girls reveal themselves fully and completely, and give us access to their deepest thoughts. Others seem to hold back a little initially, but loosen up over time. The same might be said for viewers of the series. What may seem initially disturbing becomes commonplace over time as three of the 12 girls experience the stresses and anxieties of pregnancy in their lives, and all face drinking, premarital sex, social pressure, and the relentless push to do better and make something of themselves. You may be surprised at what you see, but as it's repeated again and again, the message comes home: high school is a very tough time for most teen girls.

If I could wave a magic wand, I'd wish every mother in America could sit down with her teenage daughter and see this series together, or at least make time for one or two episodes. There are so many opportunities to launch life-changing discussions about the difficult topics many parents shy away from. And for teenage girls, there are real-life examples of what really happens even in 'the best of schools' and ways to say, "This is what I face as well."

Without judgment and with a great deal of compassion, High School Confidential opens the doors wide open to what high school life is really like for teenage girls. It's up to us - as active, engaged parents and viewers - to step up and take a look inside.

High School Confidential
An Original Series on WE tv
Mondays, March 10 through April 28, 2008
10 pm ET / 9 pm CT
Episodes repeated as scheduled - check local TV listings