On Tuesday, October 24, students in grades 3-12 worked with the faculty and staff on an all-school collaboration. During the collaboration, the entire school was divided up into 48 teams with about 14 students and three adults in each.
To start the collaboration, each group met in an assigned location where they began a mindfulness activity that focused on "stopping, breathing, and thinking." The next activity included a name game used as an icebreaker for each group. As the program continued, the teams then worked on the Kindness Rocks Project where they decorated rocks with a message of inspiration, placed them around campus with the idea that someone will eventually find them and share the meaningful message with others. The final activity was a collaborative challenge that encouraged teamwork, communication, and problem solving amongst team members. To round up the day, the groups engaged in a reflection including questions like "How did you feel at the beginning, middle, and end of this exercise?" and "What did you do to encourage each other's contributions or help each other to continue to contribute?"
The goals of these shared activities were to build community spirit, provide space and time to connect with people from all three divisions, facilitate collaboration in multi-divisional teams, and find time to spread positivity and encouragement.