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041604 Fox Lane recognizes Earth Day
This year, Fox Lane will recognize Earth Day differently than it has in the past. On Thursday, April 22, the entire student body will listen to guest lecturers and take part in group seminars as part of the school's first-ever Wellness Day.
The seminars, which will be run by faculty, staff, and members of the community, will focus on various issues and topics of interest to high school students, including, but not limited to, the minority achievement gap, healthy eating, homosexual rights, self-defense, and first aid. All students will attend three seminars instead of regular classes. Students have already been give the opportunity to choose their top five choices for each of the three seminar blocks. Certain seminars will be conducted in Spanish for ESL students.
Students will also listen to two keynote speakers during
the course of the day. The first is a representative from a homosexual advocacy
group. The second is a former member of a white supremacy group who has since
severed his ties with the organization and written a book on his experience.
In the past, Fox Lane has recognized Earth Day with a lunchtime assembly that was more specifically focused on environmental issues and a Band-B-Q. Students were encouraged by Youth in Action, the club that has traditionally organized Earth Day events, to be friendlier to the environment by driving to school in car pools.
Originally, the administration had no intention of replacing Earth Day activities with Wellness Day, and planned instead to hold the new day in addition to the traditional Earth Day. A committee of faculty, staff, and students was recruited to plan the new day. However, when it was discovered that Wellness Day had inadvertently been scheduled for the same day as Earth Day, the decision was made to hold only Wellness Day, and Youth in Action leaders became a part of the planning process.
Although this Earth Day will not be as wholly focused on the environment as it has been in the past, Kate Schuster, the president of Youth in Action, is optimistic that the new Wellness Day may encourage more enthusiastic student participation.
"Earth Day as a whole has never been that successful," says Kate, explaining that, in spite of all the hard work by students and faculty, the student body has never taken the day seriously enough to be responsive. She hopes that Wellness Day, which places a greater emphasis on individual issues, will entice students to pay greater attention to the lessons of the day.
Still, if history is any indication, provoking a genuinely interested response from students will not be easy task for the administration. Human relations, an activity in which students met in small groups at regular intervals during the year to discuss issues, was once a hallmark of the academic year, but was discontinued in 2002 due to lack of student interest. - Mix it Up Day and events held this year and last attempting to educate students on the dangers of drug abuse have had similarly mild results.
Perhaps the most successful activity for students to be held in recent years is Stress Down Day, which was held in 2002. As part of Stress Down Day, prominent actor and local resident Christopher Reeve came to Fox Lane to address the student body. The speech made a significant impact on students. The example of Stress Down Day may mean good things for Wellness Day, which will benefit from a similarly structured program and guest speakers.
Some of the activities for Wellness Day have already been put into place. - Some students involved in the Wellness Day committee have begun selling tickets for a senior service raffle, in which seniors are raffled off to underclassmen to offer basic services, such as rides to school in the morning.
While Wellness Day may still be a bit too far off to have attracted the full attention of the full student body, it has been announced to students and is fast approaching. Hopefully, after Wellness Day, Fox Lane will be able to say that it has found its ability to captivatp _Sttidents_fnt sine day i,