Teacher, Students Hope Congress Will Give ‘Peace Day’ a Chance

It started as a small, modest idea.

A couple of swastikas sketched on a class test got an English teacher at a Lake Los Angeles school thinking, “Peace--we need more peace, tolerance, less violence.”

But never did Bruce Galler, a teacher at Challenger Middle School, imagine that his idea, a proposed “Increase the Peace Day,” would be discussed by the U.S. House of Representatives. Now, he’d better believe it, he said.

Galler initially recruited a few students to put together a petition designating April 20--the date of the Columbine High School shooting--as a national peace day at American schools. Soon the idea had the backing of local officials. U.S. Rep. Howard P. “Buck” McKeon (R-Santa Clarita) heard the idea and from there it traveled to Washington, D.C.

A week ago McKeon introduced HR 507, a bill written by the teacher and students, in the U.S. House of Representatives calling for a national peace day. The bill was referred to the Committee on Education and Work Force. If passed by the committee, it will move to the House for consideration.

Today five adults and 19 Challenger High students will fly to Washington to talk to members of Congress about the project. The group also plans to meet with the staffs of California Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer and give them more copies of the petition, he said.

“I promised to introduce this resolution to show that as one member of Congress, I can do something to highlight this important event and encourage all Americans to reject anger and hate and instead to promote peace and community,” McKeon said.

David Foy, a spokesman for McKeon, added: “Every school in the country should have a similar program. We would like to get it passed as soon as we can.”

To kick off their campaign for a National Day of Peace at schools nationwide, Galler and the students circulated petitions at supermarkets, city hall meetings, schools and neighborhoods throughout the Lancaster area and the rest of the Antelope Valley, eventually gathering 1,000 signatures.

“It just started growing bigger and bigger,” said Courtney Steinwachs, 13.

Galler said that schools, especially in the Antelope Valley, an area recently plagued by hate crimes, needed such a day to remind students that hate crimes hurt entire communities.

Galler decided to act one day while collecting English tests in class. He was shocked to find swastika drawings and other racist remarks on two papers.

Challenger is a small and diverse school of no more than 650 students in Lake Los Angeles--”a place where everybody knows everybody. Yet,” he said, “there it was, a swastika staring at me, right in the face.”

Instead of expelling the students, Galler offered another solution--making them understand that their actions hurt others. He talked to their parents and sat down with them to watch “Schindler’s List,” a movie about the Holocaust.

“I have seen them change,” he said. “Promoting peace is not a magical wound that is going to solve everything. We can only give them the tools to change. This could be the beginning of a solution.”

His students agree. He took a group to Littleton, Colo., in April to meet with survivors of the Columbine shooting. They saw a somber town, trying to recover one day at a time. They saw young people who lost the sparkle in their eyes and their smiles.

“I learned not to take life for granted,” said Ashley Smith, 13, who made the trip. “You never know when you are going to have a person come to school and shoot you.”

Other students who will travel with Galler today said they would like to show the world that not all teenagers are prone to violence and that they can do small things to make schools and cities better, more peaceful places.

“We don’t want the kids in Columbine to have died in vain,” said Sonya Arellano, 14.

“We feel like real proud,” said Juan Zamora, 13. “We just don’t want shootings in other places.”