"This I Believe" is a collection of essays from people all over the world. The idea was created to engage youths and adults in writing, sharing and discussing the core values that guide their daily lives. The assembly and 15 guest panels covered topics such as the arts, following your passion, sports and fitness.
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Original Title
Newton South Student Body Gathers for Public Dialogue About Beliefs
"This I Believe" is a collection of essays from people all over the world. The idea was created to engage youths and adults in writing, sharing and discussing the core values that guide their daily lives. The assembly and 15 guest panels covered topics such as the arts, following your passion, sports and fitness.
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Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
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"This I Believe" is a collection of essays from people all over the world. The idea was created to engage youths and adults in writing, sharing and discussing the core values that guide their daily lives. The assembly and 15 guest panels covered topics such as the arts, following your passion, sports and fitness.
Copyright:
Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
Available Formats
Download as DOC, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
Newton South student body gathers for public dialogue about
beliefs
WICKED LOCAL STAFF PHOTO BY KATE FLOCK
Carlton Kendrick speaks to a group about the impact of technology on our lives during the One School, One Book event, “This I Believe,” at Newton South High School.
By Laura Paine/Staff Writer
Wicked Local Newton Posted Sep 28, 2010 @ 01:15 PM Newton — The Newton South High School community believes in a great number of things, including the ability of the students and faculty to find their passion, follow their dreams and work hard to be great at what they do. Over the summer, students at the high school read “This I Believe II,” a collection of essays from people all over the world about their philosophies and core beliefs. The idea was created by the nonprofit “This I Believe” in an effort to engage youths and adults in writing, sharing and discussing the core values that guide their daily lives. South students were required to write their own “This I Believe” essays as a part of the summer reading program. Brian Baron, English Department chairman at South, worked with parent Julie Sall to put together a schoolwide assembly and 15 guest panels covering topics such as the Arts; Following Your Passion; Sports and Fitness; Real Science; Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender (LGBT) and the World. Keynote speaker Atul Gawande, a physician and author, told students about the infamous Van Halen contract in which David Lee Roth put a clause requiring a bowl of M&Ms, sans the brown ones, or the venue would risk forfeiting the show. Roth threw a fit in Boulder, Colo., when there was a bowl including brown M&Ms and refused to play the show, because if workers at the arena did not follow this rule, Roth’s interpretation was workers did not read any of the rules, and band members risked getting hurt or killed because of the complexity of their stage setup. “Sure enough, when they went out to look at the stage setting, it fell through the floor,” Gawande said. He went on to say that using a checklist allowed Brigham and Women’s Hospital and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute to reduce their complication and death rate by 30 percent. He asked students how they would handle the reality that there is more stuff out there than they will ever be able to cram into their heads. “Take pride in all that you know and all that you can learn, but also take pride in knowing that you won’t know it all and you will have to find ways to make it possible to succeed to spite it. No one’s brain can know it all. So walk away with one rule: no brown M&Ms.” Baron put the event together for students to learn that reading and writing can affect their lives in a profound way. “I hope that there is one nugget that each kid gets, one pearl of wisdom, one idea that pushes them in a direction they haven’t thought of before, to pick out some area that they’re interested in and learn about it in a different way,” Baron said. “I hope that there is one perspective that hits them, that they walk away and think about. There are a lot of things in school that you don’t remember after, but events like this I hope hit home and [the students] take something away from it and cause [them] to consider things in a different way.” In the LGBT and the World panel, Newton South technical education teacher Jenn Stephens sat before the students and told them about her experiences as a transgender woman. She said she does not want to hide her past as a male. “I need to be as open as possible because many transgender people are not,” she said. “I celebrate my past. I believe when you are yourself you’re more comfortable with yourself.” Stephens said coming out in Newton was easy, because of the kind of community Newton is, and student panelist, senior Harry Neff, agreed. “South does a good job of fostering an accepting community,” Neff said. “My open homosexuality has not been an issue at all.” Ray Farmer, a junior, sat in on the Race and Ethnicity panel, which featured student panelists Lillian Castro, grade 11; Jessica Naeun Kang, grade 12; and Jeffrey Alkins, grade 12, in addition to community members Chris Sumner and Rufus Faulk. Farmer said he thought it would be interesting because he is mixed race. “I liked the different ethnicities in the panel and the different perspectives,” he said. “I learned all of the different perspectives and learned deeper into how my friends feel about acceptance.” Farmer said he learned a lot from the panel, particularly in regards to the way he treats a friend of his who is of Asian descent and has a hard time speaking English. “Before the panel, my friends and I would make fun of him jokingly, but we’re still friends with him,” he said. “After Jessica explained her experience, the culture shock, I took it and told my friend who was with me that we can’t laugh at him. I took into perspective if I was going to a foreign country and I had to adapt and learn a whole different language. I took an appreciation to how hard they try.” Newton South girls varsity softball coach Dave Salett was a panelist on Following Your Passion, where he told the students that he had dreamed of playing baseball and had been scouted by the Detroit Tigers, but ended up going into business instead because his father told him there was “no money in baseball.” “He believed the things you pursue should bring you great wealth,” Salett said. “I have no regrets, [but] it’s not too late to set the voices of your parents aside and do what you want to do, hopefully with their blessing. There is plenty of time ahead of you and if you change your mind about what you want to do, that’s OK.” During the school-wide assembly, Principal Joel Stembridge read his own essay about his belief that South is a wonderful school. He said that since he became principal he has listened to many of the students talk about the things they love about South, without ever saying that they actually love South. “The truth is, South is us,” Stembridge said. “We create anew each year. To be clear, the walls, the halls and its classroom do not give South its character. We the people make South what it is and what it can be. We create and can recreate Newton South.” He said he believes if everyone works together to embody the South that they want, they can transform the school and told students they should go to games, plays and concerts to cheer each other on and thank an adult for what they do. He suggested teachers should make clear each day what they would do to help their students succeed and allow for an extension when a student comes to them with a difficult week. He tells parents to give the teachers the benefit of the doubt and to assume that they care deeply about their children. “If every person here commits to acting in one of these ways, three times each day, that leaves 6,000 acts a day and 1,080,000 acts for the school year, we can positively transform South into a school that we can confidently say we love,” Stembridge said. “This I believe, it is our responsibility, yours and mine and no one else’s, to transform South into a school where we can honestly proclaim, ‘we love our school.’”