Anyone Else Encounter "Rachel's Challenge"?

[jluetjen]

Yesterday the school system in our town had presentations to the middle and high-school students by a foundation called "Rachel's Challenge". My understanding was that it would be some sort of anti-bullying program.

Last night they had a presentation for the parents which I attended. I was surprised by how wrong my expectations were, and pleasantly surprised and deeply moved by the presentation. In a nutshell, bullying was hardly discussed (directly). Instead it was presentation based on the writings of Rachel Scott. One of the really moving things was the degree of presentiment or precognition that she seemed to have in regards to her future -- she was quite clearly a young women on a mission. If you're not aware (I wasn't prior to last night), but Rachel was the first person to be shot and killed in the Columbine tragedy. For a high-school student of only 17, it would seem that she touched the lives of far more people than most of us have -- in a positive way.

Has anyone else encountered "Rachel's Challenge" before? What were your impressions?

[berettafan]

typical schoolgirl 'everything is great and everyone has beauty in them' fantasy world. didn't we all go to school with a girl like this?

what happened at that school is just awful but it doesn't make the idealistic ramblings of an inexperienced little girl any more valuable than they were before. i do agree we need to take people in context but i'm not sure it's something to go on tour with.

any claims or implication that she somehow had insight into the suffering of her future murderers are dishonest at best and, imo, serve to take away any legitimacy the program may have had.

[jluetjen]

Actually the future insight that she seemed to have is that she would both have an impact on people and die early. She would say these seeming incongruous thoughts within the same conversation without any sense of fear or foreboding. 10 years on these predictions seem to be coming true.

A little less then a year before her death she wrote "This will be my last year, Lord. I have gotten what I can. Thank you.”

According to her father...

Sometime after she died, her father, Darrell Scott, received a telephone call from a businessman in Ohio. The man told Darrell “you’ll probably think I’m crazy when I tell you why I called, but I have had a recurring dream about your daughter. …”

In his dream, the man said, he had seen a stream of tears flowing from Rachel’s eyes, and they were watering something, but he couldn’t see what it was.

Would that mean anything to him or his family, the man asked.

No, Darrell said, it didn’t mean a thing. But he took down the man’s number and promised to call if it ever did mean anything.

Darrell had forgotten about the strange message until seven days later when he got a call from the sheriff’s office telling him he could pick up the contents of his daughter’s school backpack, which had been riddled by bullets.

Sitting in his truck, Darrell sorted through Rachel’s belongings and read through her final diary. When he got to the last page, there was a picture Rachel had drawn the morning she was murdered. It was of a pair of eyes crying, and the 13 tears turned to drops of blood as they watered a rose that grew out of a Columbine plant.



Thirteen was the number of victims that Harris and Klebold killed that day before taking their own lives.

One of her teachers independently has confirmed that she saw Rachel drawing that image at the end of her class about 10 minutes prior to the shooting.

It's not clear to me that she had much to say about the suffering of her future murderers, but she did seem to have a pretty powerful ideal for how to deal with people in general -- especially for a 17 year old.