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The Tri-City Herald
August 14, 2005

Leading through language

By Stacey Palevsky, Herald staff writer

CHEWELAH -- Tome mi mano, he said in Spanish. Take my hand.

Don't even think about falling down, he added in English.

Daniel Valencia reached out to Sonni Garcia, who grabbed his arm to regain her balance.

She was, after all, on a tightrope that just a moment ago violently shook beneath her sneakers.

Valencia, a sophomore at Kennewick High School, and Garcia, a senior at Kamiakin High, were two of 10 students from across the state who had to figure out how to get from one end of the rope to the other without touching the ground.

At first, they worked independently, each trying to figure out how to cross. They shouted ideas at each other in a mixture of Spanish and English.

But alone, they fell.

Fall off, start over. They weren't getting very far.

Until they realized they needed to work as a team. More than an hour later, they did it.

The ropes challenge was part of the second annual Bilingual Leadership Camp, a five-day retreat held north of Spokane designed to empower Washington's Hispanic youth.

"These kids are flying below the radar, trying not to be noticed," said camp staffer Karen Skoog of Bellevue. "But they're a rich, powerful population we're trying to bring out and see be a positive change in their community."

Hispanic leaders

Vincent Perez, a 1994 Kennewick High graduate, created the camp in 2004 when he noticed Hispanic students were underrepresented in student government and other school clubs. The effort was an extension of the work he already was doing in Randle at the Cispus Learning Center, the headquarters for Washington's leadership programs.

The camp at Chewelah Peak Learning Center is one of eight Washington summer camps that promotes leadership development. The other leadership camps, held at Cispus and designed for students who are elected high school officers, have been around since 1956.

The bilingual camp is the newest addition and the only one that specifically reaches out to Hispanic youth who have the ability to be leaders at their schools, but have not yet done so.

All present understood English and Spanish, though their conversational skills in each language varied. Some students spoke mostly in Spanish, like Valencia, who moved to Kennewick from Colombia, South America, last September. Some didn't speak any Spanish, like Garcia, whose family has been in the United States for three generations.

Many students used both languages in the same sentence.

"We're celebrating that we're bilingual," said Alyssa St. Hillaire, a camp staffer and Kamiakin Spanish teacher. "I think they are more willing to take risks because they're comfortable."

While the linguistics may be different than at other Washington leadership camps, the intent is the same: give students the tools to make their school a better place.

For many of the camp's 28 students, it's the first time they've thought about what it means to be a leader and how they can change or improve their school.

"At Cispus, we were serving students who were already going to make it," Perez said. "I wanted to give (Hispanic) kids a leadership opportunity who typically aren't going to have it."

The program has its kinks. Of the 38 students who registered for the retreat, only 28 showed up.

At the more veteran Cispus, there are fewer no-shows, and there are 250 kids registered for a total of eight sessions.

"The lesson we learned is that connections must be established between a local contact and a student," Perez said. This year's group was twice as big as last year's, Perez noted. To ensure all who register next summer show up for camp, he plans to have more direct contact with parents.

Learning the ropes

The ropes course at Chewelah has five tightropes zig-zagged between six trees.

The students fell off the ropes every time they tried to cross. Frustration flashed across their faces.

After 20 minutes of fruitless attempts, Garcia noticed a small piece of rope dangling from the top of one of the trees.

"Can we use this?" Garcia asked.

Skoog, the staff member who had quietly watched to make sure no one got hurt, gave them the go-ahead.

The students quickly figured out they could hold onto the extra rope while leaning back for balance to easily cross one section of the course.

They also figured out they needed each other.

"You can't do it all by yourself," Garcia said when they finished.

Miriam Tapia, another Kamiakin senior, added, "I learned that when you're a leader, you're not just there for yourself, but you have to be there to help others in whatever they may need."

Cooperation is a reoccurring theme at Chewelah Peak Learning Center. While staff members regularly challenge kids to think about how they, as individuals, can get more involved at school, they always remind them that it's never a solo effort.

Each activity in which the kids participated reflects that idea. It's all hands-on.

"Leadership is not something you do for an hour in the morning," Skoog told the group during an evening program. "It's a way you choose to live."

For instance, she said, leadership is not just serving on student council. It's saying, "Thank you" to the janitor, or inviting someone to eat lunch at your table who would otherwise sit alone.

"That's the leadership you can do no matter if you're elected or nominated. No importante," Skoog added. "... Begin to live like a person who wants to make a difference in the world."

Bringing it back

Student leaders are the heart and soul of any school, said Joe Fenbert, assistant camp director.

"You guys need to know you have a big, big impact on your school by what you do and what you don't do," he told the students.

It was July 27, the third night of camp, and the students already had worked for 12 hours that day. Several more hours of activities and group discussions awaited.

Fenbert told them to break up into 10 groups by school and brainstorm how to take what they learned at camp and apply it to school. The groups ranged in size from two to six students.

The representatives from Kamiakin High, where about 8 percent of the 1,400 students are Hispanic, want to start a Latino Club. Other students suggested starting a Latino tutoring club, a History of Chicanos class or making a senior project out of starting a M.E.Ch.A Club (Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano/a de Aztln, or in English, The Chicano/a student movement of Aztln).

The ideas flowed, and so did the encouragement. Raucous applause greeted each school after the students presented their strategies. Camp staff said they hoped the supportive environment gave students enough confidence to last until they returned to school.

Many of the students talked about returning next summer, either as a camper or as a junior counselor. Miriam Tapia already has started to fill out the application for a counselor slot.

"I learned to go for it," she said, "and I would love to help others have that."