Challenge Success recently announced a new set of student-run sessions that seek to gather student input on Challenge Success issues. The discussion-based sessions will take place during JLC and 8th periods, starting in Jan. 2020. The first will occur during JLC on Monday, Jan. 13, focusing on workload. Others will focus on sleep and stress; there will be multiple sessions on the same topic. They will continue at least through Wednesday, Feb. 26.

“Students can attend whichever ones that they’re available for. That way we can still interact with other TJ students and share information about CS (Challenge Success) like in a club, but in a much more low-commitment way,” junior Amber Garcha, a Challenge Success student representative, said.

Students on the Challenge Success committee have been pursuing the idea of these forums since fall.

“It’s been a long time coming. After our fall challenge success conference where we listened to professionals and other schools talk about their experience, we really started to push for these to get set up,” sophomore Lauren Delwiche, a Challenge Success student representative, said.

These sessions will be completely student-directed, as the Challenge Success committee wants to hear students’ opinions.

“We want to make sure the rest of students are all up to date with what Challenge Success is doing and that all their voices can be heard, and so in these forums students can voice their own views and ideas to us,” Garcha said.

The committee hopes to gather feedback from students on its ideas and those of other students on how to improve the school environment as it relates to Challenge Success.

“We will give out ideas that we have come up with to make the school better and ask students to tell us if they are good, okay, or absolutely terrible. We are open to all new ideas as well,” Delwiche said.

The sessions will also be used as a way to share strategies for students to accomplish the goals of Jefferson’s challenge success program: managing expectations, promoting the importance of sleep, and decoupling workload and rigor.

“We really hope that the information we share can help students deal with their own stress and pressures, and maybe have a different perspective on how to approach school,” Garcha said. “We’ve pulled together a lot of useful suggestions for students to follow, and these sessions are a great way to introduce them to the rest of the school.”

The Challenge Success committee wants to improve transparency with such opportunities for direct student communication. Challenge Success is meant to benefit students, but it is a school-wide effort.

“The teachers are doing their part by committing to one thing, the parents are starting to be asked to commit to pledges and come in for info sessions and the students are being asked to share their ideas for bettering the school,” Delwiche said.