Dr. Gwendolyn Good was expecting to observe Challenge Day activities when she visited Oakton High School in Fairfax County.
"They told me, 'There are no observers, only participants,'" Good remembered. What she experienced during the day stunned her, and Good made it her mission to bring Challenge Day to Broad Run High School, where she is an assistant principal.
The first Broad Run Challenge Day took place in March, with a run of four days the following September. If students' comments on a follow-up survey are any indication, the project was a success: "It was one of the best exercises I've ever had." "I would like to say it taught me a lot about myself and other people." "There were a lot of people crying and having the same problems as I was." "It changed my life, basically."
SO WHAT is Challenge Day?
Officially, it's a nonprofit organization that sends facilitators out to high schools like Broad Run. What it means to students is this: not only will they get a day out of class, they'll learn life lessons about stereotyping, judging others and the pain everyone sometimes feels and sometimes inflict on others.
It's all done through visual exercises like the Power Shuffle, where everyone stands behind a line on the gym floor. A facilitator instructs certain groups to step over the line: anyone who's been taunted for their weight, for example, or anyone who's known someone who considered suicide. It acts as a leveler: suddenly, students from all parts of the high-school social spectrum realize what they have in common.
"Personally, for me, it was a time for me to reconcile my past with certain people," said senior Rudy Gazarek. "It definitely buried the hatchet."
Not only students participate. In addition to the 125 teenagers, 25 adult facilitators take part in every activity and, like Good, are often affected by the experience.
Sue Wells, Broad Run's school nurse, recalled witnessing an extraordinary event during the Speak Out portion of Challenge Day: a junior boy standing up in front of all 150 people and apologizing to another junior boy for "making his life miserable," Wells said.
"I was so taken back, because it took such guts," she said. "It was just the most earth-shattering thing I'd ever seen."
After the junior apologized, he shook the other's hand, and soon other students started swarming, hugging and shaking the boy's hand too.
"For this young man, it was a life-changing day," Wells said.
Dr. Peter Hilgartner, a Leesburg chiropractor, was there that day, too. He was so impressed with what he saw that he has joined Good in her effort to spread Challenge Day to other Loudoun schools. He's also taking three days off from his practice to attend a training session in San Francisco.
"I hated high school," Hilgartner said. "I loved learning, but I hated high school. A lot of time, kids are so bogged down with just trying to survive high school, they're probably not getting as much out of learning as they can."
FIVE HUNDRED AND SIXTY Broad Run students of all grades participated in Challenge Day this year. Good's goal is to hold several days each fall, eventually just for freshmen, once the rest of the school has a chance. Students who participated in years past can be student facilitators, but for the most part, Good wants students who didn't get a chance this year to take part.
Those who did participate, however, get a chance to relive a truncated version of Challenge Day a few times during the year. Last week, dozens of students met in the gym to do abbreviated versions of the Challenge Day exercises, such as sitting in a small "family group" and starting sentences with, "If you knew me" and "If you really knew me." It doesn't go as deep as Challenge Day's all-day, soul-searching, and needs some tweaking, but it's just part of the learning curve for Broad Run's new project.
Good says she sometimes hear from students who enjoyed the Challenge Day experience, but don't feel the school has changed. She feels those students didn't get the whole concept.
"I say, 'Did you change?'" Good said. The students, invariably, say yes. "The message of Challenge Day is not to look outward, but to look inward."