Challenge Day

As many of you know, I like to watch the Oprah Winfrey talk show. Last week I saw the most intriguing show about something called Challenge Day. Lisa Ling participated in Challenge Day at a typical high school in Michigan. Challenge Day was created by a couple (the names escape me). I believe 64 students took a part of this day. When the students first arrived at the auditorium, they split off to be near their friends-funny enough, the groups were divided into what would be stereotypical cliques in high school-athletes, smart kids, those kids that were of similar race, etc. The students were forced to talk to others and meet in small groups. They were asked to fill in this one statements: "If you really knew me, you would know that I...." In the beginning, the students gave pretty typical answers like if you really knew me, you would know that I am in the marching band. After some time had passed, the students started to open up and started talking about their personal lives. They were also taught a hand gesture-where you could hold up your thumb, first finger and pinky to show someone that you were giving them love from across the room. They participated in an exercise where you had to cross the line if certain circumstances had ever happened-you were caring for a sick one at home, you had ever been called a name by someone in the room, etc. It was amazing to see the transformation by the end of the day-students were reaching out to one another and sharing personal details about their lives. One student was the typical popular kid-he shared that everyone that that his family was rich but he came from a single parent home and his mom worked two jobs and he worked a job as well to buy the things that he would buy.

The purpose of Challenge Day was to show that even though schools are extremely overcrowded, many of the students are lacking connections to one another and to other people-students are more than ever feeling lonely and isolated. The show also pointed out so many different acts of violence taking place in schools because of problems at home and because of a lack of connection to others.

As always, the show made me think about my own years growing up in school. There was an incident when I was in high school where a bully actually died when the person he was picking on defended himself and accidentally hit the bully in the temple, which caused him to choke on his own tongue. Had there been a program such as Challenge Day, possibly these two individuals may have been more alike and would have known it.

The students eventually will turn into adults and are released into the real world. I thought Challenge Day was such an important event that should be incorporated into all schools and even into workplaces so that these barriers and stereotypes can be broken down. Just my simple princess thought from last week's Oprah.