Monroe High

After the Capital One Bowl (and a little shopping) I came home to flip through the channels. The Rose Bowl wasn't going the way I wanted it to (at least I got to cheer for 'Booty' a little, hehe, I know, I'm immature), seeing as the Big Ten went down, so I started looking for something else to watch. I saw that on Oprah they mentioned "Monroe High". I stopped on the channel, waiting to see if it was Monroe, MI (I know there are plenty of Monroe's around the country so figured it was just another high school). I am so glad I stayed, it was about Monroe, MI. I was so surprised, since I would have never guessed there would be a whole hour show on Monroe High. If you missed the show, maybe you could catch it again. Here is the website about it. You can watch a couple short videos on the site, but I don't think you can see the full show. Here is a little blurb about the show:

Lisa travels to Monroe, Michigan, to meet some of the 2,000 students who attend Monroe High School. Just like almost every American high school, Monroe is divided by cliques. Assistant Principal Denise Lilly says she can identify them by simply walking through the lunchroom. "You have your athletes that sit together," Denise says. "You have your African-American students who sit together, your Latino students who sit together."

Denise says she believes a lot of the tension at Monroe is race-related. "There's a lot of racial tension in the district and in the community," she says.

According to The 2003 National School Climate Survey, more than 800,000 students are verbally harassed every year in American high schools because of their race. "Last year we had a whole bunch of fights between black people and white people," says Dorian, a junior at Monroe. "They had the police at the school."

Similar to many other schools in the country, Monroe students also cope with issues like bullying, verbal harassment and teen pregnancy.

If you flip through the different pages it tells you what happened. Change starts with one person and I am so thankful that Monroe was touched by this challenge.