Kindness in action

Learning by doing is a time-honored method, and what better concept to teach in a hands-on environment than kindness?

The schools of Crook County try to start each year with a showcase event aimed at fostering kindness, says Sundance High School Principal Jim O'Connor. This year, a Nebraska-based organization called Team Concepts spent the morning posing practical puzzles for the whole student body.

Team Concepts describes itself as a company that provides team building, leadership training, public speaking and success coaching. Coaches work with businesses, schools and colleges to design engaging team-building activities.

The day before, says O'Connor, "We send 16 students from Sundance along with 24 students from Moorcroft and 16 from Hulett to Central Office and our presenter trained those kids to be able to go back to their schools and help facilitate the work that they did with the entire student body."

The volunteers in the leadership were prepared to help run groups of 12-13 kids in their buildings, mixed in grades from 7 through 12.

The activities were many and wide ranging, says O'Connor.

"It was a lot of all-hands-on stuff, all active, getting everybody involved," he says.

For example, in one activity, the groups stood holding hands and each one of them had to pass themselves through a hula hoop without breaking the circle.

In another, the groups were challenged to pass a tennis ball from one end of a tarp to the other and back without it falling through any of the holes cut into the material.

From tug-of-war to filling every gap in a "spiderweb" with at least one student, each activity was a physical puzzle.

"It's all based around kindness," O'Connor says. "It's not random acts of kindness, but intentional kindness – going out of your way to be kind to somebody."

The four tenets that Team Concepts follows to share this message are inclusion, trust, encouragement and celebration of success.

The groups were split randomly and between grades to emphasize these lessons, giving the students an opportunity to work and form bonds with kids they may have spent little time with in the past, if any at all.

When the groups shared thoughts about the experience at the end, he says, "One of the things I heard in multiple groups were 7th and 8th graders saying it was so cool getting that kind of attention from our older kids and feeling like they were able to communicate with our juniors and seniors."

The feeling was mutual, he adds.

"Even the juniors and seniors thought it was a great way for them to get to meet the younger kids."

With multiple semesters still ahead of this year's classes, it seems a few new friendships will be blossoming in the halls of SHS this year.

"I think most of our 200 kids thoroughly enjoyed themselves," says O'Connor.