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Rachel’s Challenge visit to Braham reignites compassion, kindness in schools

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Active for two years, Braham Area High School’s Friends of Rachel club just gained a slew of new members.

During the Rachel’s Challenge training session, Braham students were often asked to raise their hands if they had had certain experiences or if they were willing to share with the group. Rachel’s Challenge presenter Dee Dee Cooper (center) with student volunteers Alex Muse and Lacy Cuda. A photo from an event hosted by a Friends of Rachel club in Texas. The paper chain links each record an act of kindness by a student. The training session ended with hugs shared among students and staff who were present. Student Connor McElrath hugs high school counselor Ursula Scheele. The 2016-17 Friends of Rachel club at Braham Area High School.
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During the Rachel’s Challenge training session, Braham students were often asked to raise their hands if they had had certain experiences or if they were willing to share with the group.

Friends of Rachel clubs are formed in affiliation with Rachel’s Challenge, a nonprofit organization which promotes prevention of bullying in schools across the country.

Rachel’s Challenge was founded by the family of Rachel Scott, the first student shot in the Columbine massacre in 1999. After her death, writings of Scott’s were found extolling the virtues of kind deeds for others.

“I have this theory that if one person can go out of their way to show compassion, then it will start a chain reaction of the same,” Scott wrote. “People will never know how far a little kindness can go.”

Braham’s Friends of Rachel club formed after Rachel’s Challenge first visited Braham Schools in 2014. The organization visited Braham Area High School again on Wednesday, Oct. 5. Students watched a presentation on Rachel Scott and the mission of the organization her death catalyzed, and afterward those interested were given the opportunity to attend a training and information session for the Friends of Rachel club about ways to prevent bullying in their school.

The training session was led by Dee Dee Cooper, a domestic violence author and certified speaker for Rachel’s Challenge. She facilitated discussion among students about their experiences with bullying in and outside of school and provided them with strategies to prevent and stop bullying.

Jonelle Klemz, a school social worker at Braham, runs the district’s Friends of Rachel club.

The Rachel’s Challenge visit and training session “kind of reignited kids having an interest in it,” Klemz said.

Thursday morning the newly revitalized Friends of Rachel club met and elected a board of 12 student leaders. Klemz pointed out these leaders range in age from grades seven to 12.

The club has already decided on its first project for the year, which will be having Braham participate in Mix It Up at Lunch Day, a nationwide campaign
affiliated with the Southern Poverty Law Center, which encourages students to sit with people at lunch whom they wouldn’t normally.

Students and staff from Braham had previously been familiarized with the organization by invitation to Rachel’s Challenge events in the Pine City School District. Pine City had been awarded a grant from East Central Energy to bring Rachel’s Challenge to their campuses, under the stipulation that they invite another school district to attend as well. That school district would then be up to receive a similar grant. East Central Energy granted Braham $10,000 to bring Rachel’s Challenge to their campuses in 2014.

Klemz doesn’t feel Braham’s Schools had an abnormal amount of bullying before the first Rachel’s Challenge visit in 2014.

“We didn’t have any more problems than any other school,” she said.

Nevertheless, Klemz says the presence of the school’s Friends of Rachel club has had a positive impact on the atmosphere on campus.

“It really just makes the whole campus kinder and more welcoming,” Klemz said. “Many students feel really that they have a place.”

After the Rachel’s Challenge presentation on Wednesday, the school’s lunch supervisor told Klemz she saw students in the lunch line each buying a cookie for the person behind them.

Klemz hopes Braham will be able to continue to bring Rachel’s Challenge back to the school in the future.

“I really think we’re going to try,” she said. “Every two years is a nice amount.”


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