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From Tuesday, April 2nd, 2024, to Thursday, April 4th, 2024, Lake Shore High School and Kennedy Middle School students got to experience what Challenge Day was like.
The Challenge Day program has a successful history. According to www.challengeday.org since it began in 1987, Challenge Day has served 2,700 schools worldwide, and over 1,225,000 students. During the day, students will step out of their comfort zones multiple times. However, in March of 2020, when everything shut down, the program was forced to go virtual. But, on August 30th, 2021, the program held its first in-person conference since that shutdown. http://www.challengeday.org then describes the six events that happen during the conference.
During this event, there are six different parts, all focusing on different topics. These include “Setting the Container”, “Dropping the Waterline”, “If You Really Knew Me”, “Cross the Line”, “Speak Out”, and “Coming To Completion.”
Caitlyn Larson, junior, said, “When I first was looking into “Challenge Day” and everything I had already heard about it, it sounded like just a free day from school, so I chose to go. When I got in there I was still in that mindset. But after everything that happened throughout the day, my mind changed.”
Having a skeptical feeling about a new event can be a natural feeling. But, when attending the event, some of that skepticism might go away, and eventually the opinion might change to the point where the event is a good one.
Megan Sweeney, freshman, said, “I enjoyed Challenge Day. I liked the different activities we did and it was nice to hear from others experiencing the same things as you. It was also nice to hear different perspectives on situations.”
Broadening your horizons is a vital skill to have as you’ll use it in your everyday life. This is because if you’re able to broaden your horizons and gain new perspectives on certain issues, then you can use those skills to determine the outcome of the situation.
Larson continued, “Challenge Day” was actually really fun in my opinion! We got to do many fun activities but we also got the chance to share some serious topics. Many people who were originally in the mindset I was in, changed. One of the activities we did was to sit in a group we were given and share certain things that we felt like sharing. This included many sensitive topics. This made many of us feel vulnerable but at the end of the day, we found out that we all aren’t that different. Another activity we did was called “Cross the Line”. We were told a prompt and if we agreed with the prompt, we would step over the line. These prompts were sensitive prompts causing me and many others to feel vulnerable and some even cried. This was a way of showing what we go through without needing to say it out loud. Overall, I have learned a lot from this experience. It caused me to think about my surroundings and see that we are all very similar. We just don’t talk about what we go through but instead we come up with our image. I appreciate and am so happy I got the chance to do this and I’m really hoping that Lake Shore continues to do “Challenge Day” because how much of an impact it has made on the people who got to go.”
Challenge Day is a phenomenal experience, and many students shared similar sentiments of changing their mindsets after experiencing the day.
