Blue Valley Benevolence
Senior informs about SevenDays kindness club
Words by Sami Sandler
It’s that time of year again: SevenDays of Kindness week. This year, the SevenDays committee works to better the tiger community by spreading their message.
In 2014 tragic news struck the BV community: freshman Reat Underwood had been killed in a hate crime. His family — along with the community — rose above this and founded an organization whose message is to stop hate through education and dialogue. To honor Reat and his family, BVH has its own SevenDays committee that brings the school together in efforts to spread kindness.
“The idea is that you can stop hate with small ripples of kindness,” This year’s club co-president, senior Caroline Gordon said.
In addition to being inspired to join by the SevenDays sponsor, Dianne O’Bryan, Gordon’s older siblings participated in this club and convinced her to take part as well.
“I’m one of Mrs. O’Bryan’s students, and my brother and sister have always been a part of it. My brother was president,” she said. “Now I’m co-presidents with Sami Sandler. We’re in charge of leading the [committee].
Among several Kindness Week activities, the mini-walk is a BV staple. It has even spread to other schools in the area.
“Each year, the whole student body gets involved,” Gordon said.
As each grade walks around the track, they have the ability to perform their own act of kindness by writing notes to teachers.
Another way students and community members can get involved is through the food drive. Last year the BVH community came together and collected over 4,000 items to donate to the Blue Valley food pantry.
“This is one of the biggest drives that helps the pantry get through the summer,” O’Bryan said.
“This year, we’re also working on a smaller drive collecting rainy day activities like coloring books and card games for kids in the hospital,” Gordon said.
“We need to better our school community. I’ve seen and heard of things going down in our school that weren’t so kind, people getting hurt by the words of others,” Gordon said. “This committee is a way to get involved and help spread that message [of kindness].”
With everything going on in society nowadays, Gordon believes it is especially important to keep the core vision of SevenDays in mind: make a ripple, change the world.
“It’s important that we continue to be kind people,” she said.
Tiger Talks: Youth Court
Member of Youth Court impacts community while gaining knowledge
Video by Paige Faulkner
Community CAPStones
CAPS teacher discusses community collaboration in education
Words by Beckett Hodes
Blue Valley’s Center for Advanced Professional Studies, typically known as CAPS, offers students opportunities to experience potential careers in areas such as law, education, engineering, or as led by Kelly Tuel, veterinary medicine.
As of right now, CAPS has no animals of its own, but Tuel and her students can be found across the community, assisting nonprofit organizations with their animals – making a difference and gaining valuable hands-on experience.
“One of our sites that we go to is the Kansas City Hope Garden,” said Tuel, “It’s a sustainable garden, and they have a bunch of different animals that they use for the manure.”
The KC Hope Garden, founded by Blue Valley resident Emma Entwistle, seeks to teach the community about sustainable farming practices while providing fresh produce to high-need Kansan families.
“We recently started a new project for Kansas City Hope Garden,” said Tuel. “So the next couple days, we’re going to be researching, because we’re going to be breeding rabbits. So even though we’re in the classroom on the days that we’re working on that project, we’re still a part of the community.”
Tuel’s class has worked on a number of other projects this semester.
“That’s just one example,” she said. “There’s a lot of opportunity for students to give input on what we learn in class, and I have some flexibility. So this semester, the students really wanted to hatch something — and in the meanwhile Kansas City Hope Garden was wanting to get more turkeys — so we said, well, why don’t we hatch turkeys?”
The hope garden is not the only community organization which Tuel’s class works with.
“My students and I volunteer at Deanna Rose Farmstead,” Tuel said, “We help with the kidding season, when the mamas are having their baby goats. I bring in my small army of students, and we muck, which is cleaning out the pens that the moms are in. We can clean these pens within an hour, and it would take the staff there all day to do that.”
After the mucking, students are rewarded with getting to meet and socialize the kids. Tuel said that they occasionally get to see a birth.
“I love the sense of community working with all sorts of business partners throughout the area,” Tuel said. “Everyone that we engage with is passionate about education, sharing what they know and giving their experience of how they got to that particular place.”
