Electric Fishwrap

Challenge Day program coming to 2 area high schools

By KATE MARTIN

Skagit Valley Herald staff writer

MOUNT VERNON — High school is all about labels.

Ugly words cross the halls every day, said Kirsten White, a senior at Mount Vernon High School. Students gravitate to others among whom they feel safe along racial, social and class lines.

The division among students is no more evident than at lunchtime, White said. Students stand in line, pick up their food and then turn toward the open cafeteria. “The turn,” she said, “is the moment where you know if you’re wanted or needed at your school.”

White explained the hierarchy at lunchtime: senior girls at one table, varsity boys basketball at another. Latinos sat in the back, and the music crowd takes up a good portion of the side.

“It’s almost like assigned seating,” she said. While many made “the turn” with confidence and immediately walked toward their peers, others scanned the crowd, looking for a place to belong.

High school cliques are nothing new, White said, but at the end of the day, “hundreds of students could tell of hundreds of instances in which they did not feel safe, loved or celebrated in our school.”

White wants to end the pain, humiliation and frustration that many students feel every day. That’s why, for the past year, White has worked to bring Challenge Day to her school. Her quest to bring the event to the school started when she saw Challenge Day featured on the Oprah Winfrey Show last year. Organizing the event and raising money for its implementation has become her senior project.

Back then, she wondered how the event could change the climate at Mount Vernon High. The cost to bring Challenge Day to Mount Vernon is costly, about $3,500 per day, and because the nonprofit group that facilitates the event stays for a minimum of three days, White offered to partner with Sedro-Woolley High School. The schools will now host two days of Challenge Day each.

Through team-building exercises and revealing conversations, students grow closer to each other throughout Challenge Day, said Jeff Ingrum, an assistant principal at Sedro-Woolley High School. He participated in Challenge Day when he was a teacher at Lakewood Middle School about eight years ago.

He said Challenge Day brought tangible results to Lakeview: less bullying, happier students.

The event brings together students of different backgrounds, races and social circles. Despite differences, students learn they all have common ground, White said.

“All of these students see each other every day, but they feel alone even though there are 1,000 students around them,” White said.

She formed a group of students, called the “Be the Change” team, to help raise $7,000 for two days of Challenge Day at Mount Vernon High. Two facilitators from the California group will manage two days at Sedro-Woolley High this Tuesday and Wednesday and two days at Mount Vernon High on Thursday and Friday. Each day will serve 100 students and 30 community members.

The superintendents of Sedro-Woolley and Mount Vernon are attending their respective Challenge Days. Sedro-Woolley will also host Police Chief Doug Wood and Northwest Educational Service District Superintendent Jerry Jenkins.

Mount Vernon will host Skagit County Superior Court Commissioner Brian Paxton. Students and administrators from other schools in the county have also been invited to Sedro-Woolley’s Challenge Day.

Ingrum said Challenge Day should not be a one-time event, and he hopes it can go countywide.

“It’s a spark. You have to keep refueling the fire with it,” Ingrum said. “We’re expecting it to be the spark that gets kids going in the right direction.”

Vanessa Flores is a senior now and on the “Be the Change” team, but when she first came to Mount Vernon High, she avoided the cafeteria.

“Ninth grade was a really bad year for me,” she said. “I didn’t sit in the cafeteria because sometimes my friends wouldn’t be there.”

But maybe after Challenge Day, students will be more welcoming. White hopes so.

“I want Challenge Day to change the daily experiences of students for the better,” she said. “Even if this year … that just means a few more smiles in the hallway, or a few more students who do not have to do ‘the turn’ with such intense terror.”

Originally published Feb. 4, 2008.