Wednesday, March 31, 2004
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Wednesday, March 31, 2004 |
| Schools here remember Columbine By J. FRANK LYNCH Memories of the worst school massacre in the nation’s history will be renewed at the Starr’s Mill school complex on Thursday when the father and sister of Rachel Scott, one of the Columbine High School victims, talks to assemblies of local middle and high school students. Students from Starr’s Mill and Whitewater high schools and Rising Starr and Whitewater middle schools were all scheduled to attend the sessions in rotation April 1 at the Willie Duke Auditorium on the South Complex campus, according to Melinda Berry-Dreisbach, spokeswoman for the Fayette County School System. That will be the fifth anniversary of the 1999 suicide mission by two angry teens at a suburban Denver, Colo., high school that left 14 students and a teacher dead. Berry-Dreisbach said local students, teachers and parents will be involved in “Rachel’s Challenge,” a program aimed at helping create safer schools that was started by the Scotts after Rachel’s death. The local schools are launching “Rachel’s Challenge” initiatives, inspired by a poem Rachel wrote for one of her English classes a month before her death. The poem, “My Ethics, My Code of Life,” emphasized the importance of showing compassion and appreciation to everyone in life. “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. People will never know how far a little kindness can go,” read the poem. The Scotts have traveled around the nation in the years since Rachel’s death spreading her message. Thursday’s assembly, like many others, will include personal interviews with Columbine survivors and real talk from professionally speakers. Students will receive interactive training about the impact of bullying and name-calling and the local schools will be given resources to provide ongoing training and activities to reinforce what the students learned. For more information on the Scott’s efforts, go to www.rachelschallenge.com.
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