King Mark Robbins is blazing new trails.

        The 17-year-old senior at the School for Creative and Performing Arts is one of only four male students among 40 who are teaching the power of abstinence through Cincinnati Public Schools' Postponing Sexual Involvement (PSI) program.

HOW TO BECOME A PSI LEADER

To become a Postponing Sexual Involvement teen leader, applicants must:     • Be an incoming 10th, 11th or 12th-grade student enrolled in Cincinnati Public Schools.     • Relate well to other teens.     • Desire to be involved in teen-age pregnancy prevention activities.     • Feel comfortable speaking before a group.     • Maintain a C average or better.     To apply, contact your principal or the PSI office, 513-872-8948, or e-mail christopher.kraus@chmcc.org. Application deadline for 2002-03 school year is Wednesday.

        Ever since the PSI program started 12 years ago, about 90 percent of its teen leaders have been female.

        “It's harder to recruit males because it's seen as socially unacceptable for them to be part of PSI,” said Christopher Kraus, PSI adolescent advocacy manager.

        King warns about the dangers of premarital sex to fifth- through eighth-graders at 21 Cincinnati public schools. King said he conveys the message of abstinence because it's a message seldom heard.

        “You don't hear it often,” King said, “but I know I am one of thousands across the country giving out a positive message.”

        PSI was designed through a partnership between Cincinnati Public Schools and Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center. The goal is to help teen-agers resist social and peer pressures to become sexually active.

        King, who lost his virginity at 15, said it was a mistake. He said he has since learned the importance of abstinence.

        “Somebody can tell you no, but you have to learn it for yourself,” he said.

        King said while teen leaders are often ridiculed for their involvement in PSI, he has never been personally attacked.

        He was inspired to join PSI at the beginning of the 2001-02 school year after seeing other PSI team leaders teaching in the community.

        The drama-music major is an A-average student and National Honor Society member who worked hard his sophomore and junior years to make time for PSI his senior year.

        During sessions at elementary and middle schools, King often sets up role-playing scenarios in which students are pressured into having sex.

        In a recent session at Shroder Paideia Academy in Kennedy Heights, King portrayed a seventh-grader. “You haven't gotten the skins yet?” King asked a student.

        Apparently, students were impressed with what they heard.

        “King doesn't say bad things about people. He tells us what we need to know,” said seventh-grader Jameel Nevins.

        “King explains that sex isn't all what it's hyped up to be,” said Jermaine Norman, another seventh-grader at Shroder. “He says to respect girls when they say "no' and don't keep asking (for sex).”

        King urges parents to have frank conversations about sex with their children. Students who fail to return homework from PSI sessions also tend to be the ones who do not discuss sex with their parents.

        King wants students to walk away from PSI enlightened.

        “If I can make a difference and recruit some bright students to follow in my footsteps, I would encourage them to be a teen leader, whether it's through PSI, Big Brothers/Big Sisters or another organization,” he said.

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