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Schools

Gilroy High to Host Challenge Day on Wednesday

Gilroy High students will get a lesson in tolerance, respect and empathy during the day-long event on Wednesday.

Sixty Gilroy High School students will learn about the importance of respecting and accepting fellow Mustangs on Wednesday, when they’re locked in the school’s main gym for over six hours to participate in Challenge Day.

According to Gilroy High special education teacher Ramona Trevino, the event will feature several workshops and discussions that teach students how to connect and build empathy for their peers.

“Challenge Day helps you see through people in other ways and understand that everyone is the same,” Trevino said. “We are all created equal and we're all one. It will change the inner parts of us and you'll want to go out and make a difference.”

But not so fast, Trevino says, not everyone on campus can take part in the training, only students who have permission slips signed by their parents can participate.

Gilroy High Freshman Vice President Juan Refugio Davalos said he’s excited to participate in Wednesday’s event because it offers attendees a chance to address important issues, like campus violence and bullying, and collaborate with other attendees on how to resolve them.

“I’m excited to learn what Challenge Day is all about and if everyone works together, we can stop the violence on campus and the bullying that goes on,” he said.

Twenty-eight community leaders from the city’s youth commission, local churches, Gilroy High and the South Valley Gang Task Force will attend and lead Challenge Day training sessions and workshops, Trevino said. The training sessions and workshops are geared toward teaching students to tolerate differences, and also focus on techniques to identify students who may not fit in socially.  

“When you see a person walking by themselves or sitting quietly in the back of the classroom, you don’t know what is going on in their personal life,” Trevino said. “This program teaches you that everyone has emotions and feelings.”

To promote the event, Davalos said class officers and students from Gilroy High’s leadership class have been leading outreach efforts via the school's Facebook page, and that they’ve been posting flyers around campus.

Trevino, who has been teaching for almost two years at Gilroy High, participated in several Challenge Day events at San Benito High School, where she taught, and approached GHS officials at the beginning of the school year about leading a Challenge Day event on campus.

With the help of the school’s activities director, Andrea Gamble, and several students, Trevino and her team were able to raise over $3,200 to fund the event through hosting pancake breakfasts at the local Applebee’s, and received a $500 grant from the Santa Clara Health Trust for materials.

The Challenge Day group decided to give some of the raised funds back to the community when died from injuries he sustained in a November car crash. The donated money went to the Gaines family to help pay for medical and funeral costs.

Trevino and her gang also received two free rooms from the to house Challenge Day staff members who will be commuting from Concord to lead the training sessions and workshops.

“Everybody’s been pitching in, and it has been great, it’s been a real blessing to get this whole thing organized,” Trevino said.

Challenge Day has served more than one million youth in 400 cities, 45 U.S. states and five Canadian provinces since 1987, according to the Challenge Day website.

Gilroy High held a Challenge Day in 2007, but was unable to continue the program, school officials said. Trevino has been working to keep the ball rolling by getting students to start a campus club called “The Challengers,” and said she'd like to see similar programs started in Gilroy’s middle schools.

“Once you hold an event like this, you want to keep it going so it doesn’t die,” she said.

 

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