Cinco de Mayo: reality or business ploy See page 4
Summer Festivals 2017
#getwellTanguy
See Page Nine
See Pages 6&7
see page 11
Fremont High School
the
PHOENIX
Vol. 5 Issue No. 7 may 5, 2017
We Challenge You To... {make a change} by Emily Wright & Andrea Lanfranconi Collaboration
Challenge Day has arrived at Fremont. On April 24, Fremont High School invited 100 students and 25 staff to participate in a day-long empathy building camp, according to Jay Lin, Dean of Students. Challenge Day is a nation-wide organization that offers programs that aim to reduce bullying and build school culture. The traditional Challenge Day format that FHS participated in is “an experiential social and emotional learning program . . . [offering] an opportunity to ignite a shift toward greater school connectedness, empathy and inclusivity,” according to the Challenge Day organization. “[It is] a powerful high energy program to increase self esteem, self empowerment, shift dangerous peer pressure into positive group support,” Jeff Kakes, a FHS teacher who participated in Challenge Day, said. “And eliminate the acceptability of teasing, bullying, all other forms of social violence and oppression. It’s like Camp Everytown on steroids.” According to Lin, building school culture at FHS is one of his goals. “It’s been instilled in me by previous administrators and teachers [of] this need to build empathy in our school culture,” Lin said. “To be accepting of all people, it doesn’t matter their creed.” Students who participated in the program, which ran from 8:30 to 3:15, were nominated by teachers. Teachers were asked to select students that they felt could benefit from this kind of leadership training. Among the students
that were nominated, 100 chose to participate in the program after going to an informational meeting. Before the event, students said they were excited to participate in Challenge Day. “I want to get to know others better,” one student said. “I went to Camp Everytown and I think that it [Challenge Day] will be something like that,” Vicky Chung, senior, said. “I think we are going to be talking about controversial issues like race, sexuality, United Airlines,” senior Steven Vong said. Additionally, teachers were allowed to volunteer for the program. However, they did not facilitate the program. That was done by outside instructors from the Challenge Day organization. “[Teachers are] facilitating exercises, but they’re not leading anything,” Lin said. “In fact, often times when they’re facilitating, they’re sharing their experiences as well, and so they become involved. So every time I’ve gone to Camp Everytown and I imagine we’ll see this here [on Challenge Day], there are some staff members that are going to get emotional too.” “The teachers that have never done it before are really excited about it,” Kakes said. “All teachers have applied the assumption that if you are not doing anything, it is because you are lazy. Simply, Challenge Day proves that it is not true. Breaking these barriers allow for teachers and students [to] become more aware about each other. I think that it is really cool that teachers are walking away with something new.” While this is Fremont’s first year hosting a Challenge Day, it is not the first
school in the district to do so. According to Lin, Homestead and Cupertino High Schools have also participated in Challenge Days before. Lin brought Challenge Day to FHS in part because of the rising costs of Camp Everytown. According to Lin, FHS has been sending students to Camp Everytown since 1996. However, rising costs have limited the number of students the school can send. “Camp Everytown is getting really expensive,” Lin said. “It’s costing over $350 per student . . . We used to bring 80+ students to Camp Everytown. Now we can only afford to bring 10 to 20.” Additionally, the camp’s format has changed. Now, instead of having a camp involving just one high school, multiple high schools participate together. “The format in which they do it is different . . . so that’s why I want to include something else that can help build school culture,” Lin said. “I think this might sound selfish, but we want to strengthen our culture. ‘Cause if you send 10 to 20 people, them coming back, I don’t know how much of a dent they will make in saturating the environment with empathy and inclusion versus sending 100. And so I’m hoping that sending this 100, they’ll be able to come back to school and really saturate the [school] environment.” The money for Challenge Day comes from the Walmart Grant for Challenge Day, which Lin had applied for. “The grant that I received allowed me to do quite a few things,” Lin said. “Staff Challenge Day, general assemblies of the whole school, and then regular Challenge Day. Now, given
the nature of the end of the year, it is impossible to do everything.” However, Lin is hoping to be able to table some of the grant for next year, as he plans on continuing Challenge Day. He would also like to offer something like a Challenge Day assembly for the school, although he feels it may not be as individually effective. As of right now, he has no plans to include this program in freshman orientation. Instead, he feels that Common Ground, an optional program after freshman orientation, is similar and has the same goals as Challenge Day. Ultimately, Lin hopes that Challenge Day will bring students and teachers together and help create a more positive, empathetic school culture. “Anytime you have students opening up to each other and teachers opening up to students, something special happens,” Kakes said. “It opens my eyes up because I get to see the students as something more than themselves . . . Hopefully it is not just making life better for people at school but also in our community. In 3 or 4 years from now, I think that a lot of students will make changes in our community. Once you plant that seed of how you want to look at people, it is really hard to shut people out and keep making such broad assumptions about them.”
Check out Photo gallery of Challenge Day at fremonthighphoenix.wixsite.com/the-phoenix Drawings courtesy of Anubha Gupta