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On Wednesday, September 25th, two Challenge Day representatives came to Madison, Alabama to meet with Bob Jones High School students and adults. Approximately one-hundred students and twenty-five adults (teachers, administrators, and counselors) attended the event. In only six and a half hours, the two representatives changed the lives of those in attendance for the better.
The mission of Challenge Day is to “provide youth and their communities with experiential workshops and programs that demonstrate the possibility of love and connection through the celebration of diversity, truth, and full expression,” according to the program’s website.
However, the works of Challenge Day did not end on Wednesday. Those who participated in the event will carry the lessons they learned on Wednesday for the rest of their lives. Wednesday was only the beginning of an ongoing journey in which students develop a sense of belonging, empathy, and compassion in order to bring about positive change. This is called the Be the Change movement.
Mrs. Drummond is the Challenge Day coordinator for Bob Jones. She was responsible for choosing the students who got to attend the event. It was her third time to participate in Challenge Day, and the event is special to her. “Challenge Day has a huge impact on every student and teacher involved,” she said. The message of Challenge Day is moving. In the middle of the program, Mrs. Drummond has witnessed students “walk across the room and restore broken friendships.”
On every Challenge Day, students and adults in attendance participate in one particularly touching exercise. The Challenge Day representative asks a question, and those to whom the question applies respond by walking across a line. For example, a representative may ask, “Who has been bullied in some manner?” If an individual has been bullied, he or she would walk across the line. Mrs. Drummond says that this is the “most powerful part of the day.” During this exercise, students realize that they and their peers share many of the same problems.
Taylorlynn Knox participated in Challenge Day when she was in the tenth grade. “I learned a lot on that day,” she said. Before Challenge Day, she hadn’t considered that “other people have a lot of problems too.” She feels that Challenge Day is a good event that “really does help people.”
Among the many invaluable skills students and adults learned on Challenge Day are intellectual flexibility, task leadership, emotional control, self-confidence, and social competence. Most importantly, those in attendance learned to notice, choose, and act to create positive change. It is great that Bob Jones High School encourages students to participate in events like Challenge Day. It proves that our school’s administrators truly care about the students.
