By Sam Elliott
Approximately more than 100 Fishers High School students have been working on and will be a part of the school’s inaugural A Journey of Hope event — a community outreach event centered around the topic of cancer as students will interactively inform visitors on facets of cancer research and its impact on society with the goal of creating hope in the fight against the disease.
The event is from 4 to 6 p.m. Feb. 26 at FHS’s College and Career Academy.
“It started as kind of an idea for how can we introduce this topic to student to learn about the processes behind cancer, a disease that’s brought up all the time and unfortunately we experience very often in our everyday lives,” FHS biology and zoology teacher Nick Heitkamp said. “Almost everyone has some sort of personal connection to it.”
Heitkamp was originally going to conduct the project with just his biology classes, but at the suggestion of his assistant principal in October proposed the idea to the rest of the FHS staff.
“It just so happened that my email just filled up with other teachers who wanted to attack the same topic of cancer with a common goal but from all different subjects we have at the high school,” he said.
In total, 30 teachers across different sciences, art classes, social studies, English, advanced physical education and performing arts will have students involved in the Feb. 26 event, which will guide visitors along the students’ interactive informational presentations.
“We’re calling it ‘A Journey of Hope’ and it will actually be a physical journey the community will walk along. When you enter the school at the entrance we’ve specified, there will only be a one-way path essentially,” Heitkamp said. “The first half of the journey is in the sciences, so we’re looking at it from a scientific perspective … Then there will be a transition and the second half is the humanities. We’ll have our English classes, both visual and performing arts and we have several local physicians who will be there to answer questions and also interact with the students, who are presenting their final presentations.”
Representatives from local Relay for Life and the American Cancer Society will also be on hand, as will art therapy organization Creating Hope and ovarian cancer awareness group Ovar’coming Together.
For more, email Heitkamp at [email protected] or visit the event’s Facebook page at on.fb.me/1k6scf4.
