Theme Week Helps Students

From March 9 to March 13, the Student-Teacher Relations Committee of Dana Hills High School’s Associated Student Union (ASU) held “What If Week” to teach students about dealing with personal problems.

Monday started off this inspiring week by asking the question “What if you really knew me?” and putting up a Compliment Wall on which students could write nice messages to their peers and teachers. Though last year there was an additional wall for students to anonymously post problems they have, this wall was not present this year because some students wrote false information.

Tuesday’s question was “What if everyone was accepted?” and Wednesday’s was “What if you were in my shoes?”

On Thursday, the question “What if I never doubted myself?” was brought up. During lunch, the ASU video team showed a video in which unknown speakers discussed some of their personal problems. The video team made sure that the people in the video were not faking anything they were saying.

The final day of the week asked “What if we all came together?” with a speech by motivational speaker Tyler Durman, who has spoken to over four million high school students. Although Durman told jokes to the audience during his presentation, he was still able to equip a serious tone when it was needed.

Durman started by talking about a student he met named Joe, a football player who was loved by everyone. Months after visiting Joe’s high school, Joe called Durman asking for help. It turned out that Joe was dealing with his own personal problem at home.

Durman said that Joe was in danger of making some bad choices, but in the end he made good choices. At the conclusion of the assembly, Durman told the students to text their parents to invite them to listen him speak about similar issues in the Porthole theater on March 17.

Junior Stephen Tadena told JSR that he loved the turnout of What If Week, saying, “I thought the event was a great way to get the whole Dana family together! Tyler Durman got all the Dolphins laughing and inspired [us]!”

Catherine Takata, the school’s commissioner of Student-Teacher Relations, told JSR, “I thought it went really well. We had really good feedback from a majority of the students. I’ve never seen so many guys cry before. This was because they were touched by what was happening. I’m so thankful that people were touched by what [Durman] said.”