Over 100 students and faculty attended the second Challenge Day of the year, a community-building event that took place March 3 in the Zhang Gym.

The upper school held this month’s Challenge Day, which lasted from 8:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., for only frosh and sophomores, as juniors and seniors participated in a similar event in September. Upperclassmen who previously attended Challenge Day could choose to act as student leaders. No assessments were allowed to be held on the day. Upper school English teacher Christopher Hurshman explains why he decided to join the event.

“Challenge Day represents values that I think are important, including the idea that the most important parts of our lives are things we don’t often share,” Hurshman said. “I really believe in the idea that our value as humans is our whole selves and that we benefit as a learning community when we recognize one another as human and there are more to us than just our ideas and our intellects.”

The first half of the event focused on creating a comfortable environment for attendees and allowing them to get to know each other. In one activity, a person standing at the center of a circle of chairs shouted a criteria, and those who fell into that criteria ran to find another chair; the last person to find a seat moved into the center and devised another criteria.

Students and faculty then separated into family groups of four or five, in which they listened to prompts read by the facilitators and shared their personal responses. For example, the first question prompt, called “lowering the waterline,” asked each participant to share a part of themselves not immediately obvious to an outside observer but that they felt like people should know. Junior Iris Fu, co-leader of the Student Diversity Coalition (SDC) and student leader at Challenge Day, found this activity most impactful.

“It was really good to get to know people on such a personal level,” Iris said. “Each one of us was given two minutes in the beginning for that first question prompt, and at the end of it I felt like I’d known them for a week. I think that was just amazing to watch.”

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Katie Wang

Student Diversity Coalition (SDC) leaders Iris Fu (11) and Fern Biswas (10) facilitate sign-ins for attendees of Challenge Day in front of the Zhang Gym the morning of March 3. “[Challenge Day] is such an important event because — I’ll talk from my own personal experience — I felt so bonded to the community after [Challenge Day],” Iris said.

During the “cross the line” activity, which took place after lunch, facilitators asked a series of questions, and people to whom those prompts applied stepped across a line on the ground. Attendees on both sides of the line then held up the American Sign Language (ASL) sign for “love” in a silent show of support.

To conclude the event, participants wrote personal reflections, setting goals for themselves and penning notes to family and friends. Sophomore Jason Shim, who attended Challenge Day in the past, reflected on how participating in the event the second time felt more enriching.

“It was definitely a way for me to see how I’ve emotionally matured because I feel like I got a bit more out of this one,” Jason said. “As a person, I had a bit more to say about my understanding of my emotional state because of the life I’ve led.”

Twice a year, the SDC invites the non-profit organization Challenge Day to the Harker upper school. The organization holds similar community-oriented events in schools across the country, hosting activities that promote vulnerability and openness to foster deeper personal understanding between attendees. Harker held its first Challenge Day in Feb. 2020.

As Harker continues to hold Challenge Days in the years to come, Iris encourages every student to attend. 

“It’s such an important event because — I’ll talk from my own personal experience — I felt so bonded to the community after [Challenge Day],” Iris said. “It’s really something I think everyone in this school should do at least once. After the pandemic, there was this lack of connection I felt with a lot of people and I feel like Challenge Day was a really good remedy to that.”