‘Peace Week’ a big hit

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By Dan King

Whitehall High School Principal Kelly McHugh wants her students to be able to solve conflicts peacefully, and so she dedicates an entire week annually to that cause.

This year’s Peace Week was filled with programs, concerts and lesson plans designed to encourage peace.

“We have done this for several years now,” McHugh said. “It’s become something we look forward to every year.”

McHugh said that throughout this past week teachers incorporated lessons of peace and peaceful conflict resolution into their lesson plans.

For example, McHugh said that art teacher Liz Lyng had her students create artwork dedicated to peace.

The art was on display in the lobby on Monday afternoon.

“The teachers really embrace this week,” McHugh added. “We really want to deal with the ‘isms,’ sexism, racism, etc.”

This year is the first to incorporate all grades K through 12 – McHugh said she was excited to extend the program beyond the high school and middle school.

“I like the idea of promoting peaceful resolutions, because you will have conflicts in life and yKelly McHughou’re going to have to handle those in a peaceful way,” she said. “I think of this as a relay race, the students are the baton and the teachers and guidance counselors are the racers. There always has to be three people.”

In addition to the art display, musician Jared Campbell came and performed various concerts for each grade. These concerts contained messages of peace and peaceful conflict resolution.

“He’s a delightful man,” McHugh stated. “His life’s work is promoting peace through music, it’s very interesting.”

Throughout the week, students set up tables in the cafeteria promoting various groups who are encouraging peace and discouraging the “isms.”

Although Peace Week is winding to an end, two events remain to embrace the ideas of peace and community service.

Tomorrow will be the town wide clean-up day, a popular event that gets the junior and senior classes out into the community, cleaning up Whitehall. Then on Saturday, the “Walk a Mile in Her Shoes” event takes place in Troy. Students from Whitehall attend the event and help raise money to prevent violence against women; last year, Whitehall raised the most out of any school in attendance.

Peace Week is the brainchild of McHugh.

“I started it years ago,” McHugh said. “In 2006 I became involved with stopping domestic violence. I felt we had to address the domestic violence against women and issues like sexism that I was seeing.”