Let’s play the anti-stereotype game.

Here is the first question: Which groups of people living in the U.S. are perceived as the dirtiest, the most violent, the welfare recipients, the most privileged, the smartest or the stupidest? Now, let’s talk about the results.

This discussion and many others are what two Grand Rapids Theological Seminary (GRTS) students are having with 9th-grade West-Michiganders. With this, they strive to reveal societal deception and create an awareness and understanding of cultural diversity.

Tamber Ward, who is pursuing a master’s in divinity, and Simon Guevara, in pursuit of a master’s in interdisciplinary studies are part of the “Word Up, Word Out” program created by the Woodrick Diversity Learning Center at Grand Rapids Community College (GRCC) and the Kent Intermediate School District (KISD).

The program began in September 2007 after GRCC and KISD received a two-year grant from the Grand Rapids Community Foundation. Tamber is the program and training coordinator for the Woodrick Diversity Learning Center and said one of the main reasons for the creation of this program was to prepare the high school students for the restructuring of the OK Leagues in West Michigan.

Previously, the OK Leagues consisted of sports teams from suburban Michigan high schools. Rarely, did the suburban high schools compete against the urban schools of the Grand Rapids City League. After the merge, students of different complexions, economic-statuses, neighborhoods and cultures will be interacting. Hence, the “Word Up, Word Out” program aids in preventing the likelihood of cultural clashes and misunderstandings erupting into serious incidents within the OK Leagues.

The Woodrick Diversity Learning Center created a curriculum and trained facilitators to lead the discussion and KISD located schools and students. Three hundred teenagers from five different school districts attend this five-hour seminar, and Guevara is one of the trained facilitators.

“We wanted to put the kids together in classrooms to talk about diversity,” Ward said, “discussing our cultural differences and why it is important to know about other people’s differences and also finding out our commonalities.”

Ward said the diversity center strongly emphasized creating a curriculum that related to teenagers and that showed the similarities among them.

“We want to hear the kid’s voices,” Ward said. “What’s going on in their schools?”

The program and training coordinator said body image is a concern with teenagers, and it is important that they do not make assumptions.

“We talk about it in our classes, in training, that you should stand up for one another, you shouldn’t allow another student to be picked on because of their body, because they’re black, because they’re female,” Ward said.

Ward said the center wants the students to know that everybody deserves to be treated fairly and with respect and that it is OK to help other kids.

“Step in and be that agent of change,” Ward said, “even if you don’t belong to that group.”

Guevara was sitting in Greek class with Ward when Ward began to talk about her job and the need for more faciliators. Ward asked Guevara if he would be interested.

For Guevara, this opportunity goes to a deeper level.

“When I was growing up, I used to be a pretty good kid, a pretty good student, but 8th/9th grade is when I started to realize that there was something different about this, my color,” said Guevara who is Hispanic.

He said that especially in this town, where the population is predominantly white “I felt like there was something not right about that.”

“I tended to take that as, well, it doesn’t matter what I do. I’m never going to pass or get through life; I’m never going to be successful because all the successful people are white, and I’m not,” Guevara said.

He said that around that grade is when he just gave up and barely graduated from high school at the lowest of his class.

“I just didn’t care, so I would just do the minimum to get through school because I just figured that it didn’t matter because nothing I do is going to change anything,” Guevara said.

He said that he carried this defeatism attitude throughout his young adult life. “In a sense, you become prejudiced against yourself,” Guevara said. “I limited myself by my own skin color. I looked at myself and believed all the stereotypes.”

Since overcoming that stronghold, Guevara said that he saw this program as an opportunity to reach out to kids that are enduring the same struggles and prevent them from making the same mistakes.

He said that the most intense part of the seminar is when a plain sheet of paper is put on the board, and above the paper are the categories of different groups of people, like Native-American, Asian, Hispanic, athlete and honor student. Each student is given a packet of good and bad adjectives. In total silence students go to the board and assign each adjective to its appropriate category, not according to personal belief, but according to what the culture of society has established.

Then, “ I say, OK, can I have all of my Hispanic students stand please, and I tear the sheet off the wall. “As a Hispanic-American you are lazy, you’re single-parents, you’re on welfare, you love drugs, and you’re a rapist,” Guevara said.

He said that there are predictable patterns and that the very worst adjectives are always assigned to African-Americans.

“It takes the breath out of the room when you have the African-American kids standing there and you say, that you are drug dealers, you’re dirty, you’re on welfare, you’re all these terrible things, and it just hits them, and it hits me every time,” Guevara said.

To calm the room down, Guevara then asks the students “Does this represent you? Is that who you are?”

“And they always look and go ‘No,’” Guevara said. “Right, but that’s what culture and our society tells you that you are, and those words have no power. They should have no power in your life, and I apologize for those words, and I hope that they have no authority in your life again.”

Ward said the teenagers love this program.

“It was a combination of KISD, GRCC and the Grand Rapids Community Foundation seeing that this is something that our community needs,” Ward said. “Our kids deserve to talk about these issues.”