At the end of the second of two Challenge Days at Kent-Meridian High School March 5, Berenice Meza stood among a group of more than 200 students, staff and community members, all linked arm in arm.
Looking out over the mass of students who began the day in different cliques with different friends and different goals, she extolled once again the main message of the last two days.
“We cannot decide if we affect people in our loves. We can only decide how we affect people,” said Meza, one of the two Challenge Day Leaders. “If we start changing ourselves, then everything else starts to change.”
And with that, the music, which had been quietly building through Meza’s speech exploded into Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing.” The students, many of whom had just shared very personal experiences with each as a way to break through the veneers all teenager show the rest of the world, slowly began to break apart, hugging each other and promising to “Be The Change” they wanted to see in their school.
According to Assistant Principal Carol Cleveland, the closed-door sessions were an opportunity for students to see how much they share, despite outward appearances or cliques to which they may belong.
Cleveland was one of the driving forces behind bringing the program to Kent-Meridian and said the school has been planning it since September and received two grants of $5,000 each to bring it to the school.
“Challenge Day is a day where we as community members, staff members and students can be united,” she said. “This is an opportunity for them to be 100 percent who they are.”
The idea is that the 400 or so students who participated feel more comfortable with each other and realize only they can change the school into a better environment for everyone.
“The gist is if we don’t like being mean to each other, what do we do different?” said Mark Steelquist of the Cascade Challenge, a volunteer at the event. “They have all the power they need to change the culture of the school.”
The idea, Steelquist said, is to show the students that everyone – even and especially the popular kids – wear a mask and project an image.
“What they come to terms with here is that everyone is gaming each other,” he said. “We can make the change here and it will travel virally through the student body.”
Non-participants were only allowed in for the final 30 minutes of the day-long session, when participants took turns apologizing to students they’d wronged and/or challenged each other to make changes in the way they treat themselves and each other.
One student apologized to two teachers and promised that he now understood and his days of drugs and fighting were over.
A KM security guard got into the act, apologizing to the good kids for not saying hi to them in halls, adding that he just doesn’t know them, but no matter what if they need to talk, he is available to any and all students.
One girl, Hollie Bolstad, challenged everyone to look at themselves in the mirror and say out loud five reasons why they like themselves. Then, with a little prompting from Meza, did it herself in front of the group.
“People don’t recognize the things in them that are good,” she said as the crowd was breaking up.
Bolstad said she thought the Challenge Day program should be required at all schools because it changed the way she views things.
“It was nothing like what I expected,” she said. “It got really emotional. It made me see a lot of things I didn’t before.”
Bolstad, 18, said she would try to remember the message and try to make a difference at school.
“You can change the world if you want to and all you have to do is have the courage to stand up and be the change,” she said.
Isis Tilton, 16, said the program also changed the way she thought and that she should take time to listen to others more carefully because they may share the same issues.
“You realize you’re not alone,” she said. “There’s always someone with a similar problem.”
Mimi Mulambo, 16, participated in the “Be the Change” club before the actual program and was one of the school’s designated school leaders.
“The point is for students to get closer to cliques they’d never hang out with,” she said. “We’re getting closer as a school and changing stereotypes of what other people want us to be.”
Mulambo also said every school should participate in the program because it has given her the confidence to talk to people she may not know.
“Now I’m self confident and walk up to people I never thought I’d talk to,” she said.
For more information about the Challenge Day program, visit www.challengeday.org.
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