RACHEL’S CHALLENGE
Students start chain reaction of kindness
Students at Lakeside Middle School accepted the challenge Tuesday to set off a chain reaction of kindness within their school.
Fifth- through seventh-graders took part in Rachel’s Challenge — a program started in memory of Rachel Scott, the first victim of 1999’s Columbine High School shootings — which aims to create a positive climate within schools by replacing acts of violence, bullying and negativity with respect, kindness and compassion.
“After her death was when her parents and her family discovered through her writings and her journals, some different things, she had a goal to start a chain reaction of kindness and compassion,” said J.B. Braden, speaker for Rachel’s Challenge. “After her death, her father felt compelled to continue her goal so he put together a school program to challenge students. Schools start chain reactions of kindness in their schools to change the atmosphere in their schools.”
Braden said a lot of schools will bring in Rachel’s Challenge as an anti-bullying program, but, he said, it’s much more than that.
“It’s about how we treat each other on a regular basis which if you do that — we’ve got five challenges that we give them — they focus more on how they treat each other in a positive way and the bullying goes away,” he said. “It’s also about excluding people. … There’s a lot of kids that get excluded and to them that’s just as bad as being picked on. So it’s about treating people with kindness and compassion, and including other people. People you wouldn’t necessarily include.”
During the program, Braden set five challeng-
es before the students to start making a difference. Challenges included seeing the best in others, dreaming big, choosing and being positive influences, speaking with words of kindness and starting a chain reaction of kindness and compassion with family and friends.
“There’s people in our lives going through things that we know nothing about, things they don’t want to talk about, things they don’t feel they can talk about,” he told students. “But that one act of kindness, that smile, that ‘Hello, how are you doing? …’ That can make a big difference in their life. It can save their life.”
A small group of students were Angie selected Ralph by to school participate counselor in Friends of Rachel, a club which will continue acts of kindness throughout the school year. Braden told The Sentinel-Record that the club is designed to keep the chain reaction going well after the speakers leave a school.
“We want this to continue and that’s why we help them start a Friends of Rachel Club, and we give them support when we leave,” he said. “We have somebody in our office that they can talk to when they have questions. We have a thing on our website where they can connect with other Friends of Rachel Clubs across the country, find out what they’re doing and share ideas. It’s to really help them keep it going and really start a chain reaction that’s going to change the atmosphere of their school.” Ralph said while she believes the middle school does a good job of making students feel safe and welcome, every program the can expose students to that will continue to build on that atmosphere is important. “For years I’ve heard about and read about Rachel’s Challenge,” she said. “I’ve talked to other counselors that brought in Rachel’s Challenge and nothing but positive things have been said about it and that it makes such a huge impact on the culture of the school.
“I feel like our school already has a positive culture for the most part, but you can always add more kindness and more of a positive culture for the kids. When they walk in the building every day, our goal is that they’re walking into a safe school and they feel safe at our school, they feel well liked, they feel like they have a person to go to. We just hope to have that even more than what we already have in our building.”