Above: Sawtooth Elementary teacher Jana Larson spent some time talking to Joyce and Dick MacFarland during the Youth Frontiers Day held at school for the fourth grade class. During the day kids learned about bullying, kindness, respect, and patience. The MacFarlands introduced the idea of Youth Frontiers to the school a number of years ago and help to pay for much of the class. Left: Two presenters, Andrew Zhao and Tony Leh led fourth graders through a wide variety of fun-filled activities during the Youth Frontiers Day.
The elementary gymnasium in the Sawtooth Elementary School was abuzz with activity on Tuesday, January 31 as a large group of fourth graders took over the elementary school gym for a whole day of exercises interspersed with messages.
There was calamitous clapping. Wondrous wiggling. Serendipitous singing. Raucous rapping. Goofy giggling. Stupendous stomping. Fingers snapping. A boomerang, arranging. And lots of dance, dance, dancing.
It was fourth-grade paradise!
Sure there was some quiet time. Not much. But some. A little anyway. A teeny snippet of time trapped momentarily in dead air.
In between all of the frenetic fun and brief moments of contemplative silence was a series of messages.
“If you choose to work together, you can make this school a kinder place,” said Tony Leh, one of the two Youth Frontiers coordinators who led the kids.
“You can make your classroom, the hallways, the bus rides, everything about your school, you can make kinder.
“Our goal today,” said Leh, “Is to have every person treated with nothing but kindness. Every single person should be addressed today with kindness.”
Leh took his message further. “Teachers need to be treated with kindness. “Teachers don’t live at the school. It might seem like they do, but they don’t. Sure, they are here when you arrive, and they stay late after you go home. But teachers have families. They have homes they go to. They work late into the night correcting your papers, getting your assignments ready. Teachers care about you. They care about whom you are going to be when you grow up. They are an inspiration to the world. They make many sacrifices for you. Please, please thank your teachers. Be kind to your teachers. It pays off.”
Andrew Zhao, Leh’s partner, led the kids through a group of action packed drills, emphasizing working together and treating each other with respect. None of it was done as a lecture, but the messages were clear, concise, interspersed with engaging and fun activities. The kids loved it.
Youth Frontiers’ mission, said Leh, is to partner with schools to build communities where students thrive socially, emotionally and academically.
“We offer one-day retreats on values like kindness, courage, and respect for students in fourth–12th grades,” said Zhao, adding they have brought Youth Frontiers’ message to 75 to 80 percent of the schools in the state.
Six high school students assisted with the workshop, Joe James, Miranda and Mariah Deschampe, Alize Pierre and Conner Franks. They looked like they were having as much fun as the fourth graders.
Funding for the Youth Frontiers programming comes from the Northland Foundation and Joyce and Dick MacFarland.
The McFarlands introduced the idea of bringing Youth Frontiers to I.S.D. 166 several years ago, said Joyce.
“Former high school principal Gwen Carman asked the teachers at a meeting if anyone of them had heard about Youth Frontiers and April Wahlstrom (science teacher and track and cross country coach) said it was a great program at Minnetonka high school, where she had gone to school. And that was all it took. If April said it was a great program, said Gwen, then it was something the school needed.”
The fourth-grade class wasn’t the only class that Zhao and Leh worked with. The next day the seventh grade class learned about courage, and the ninth-grade class spent a day learning about respect.
Youth Frontiers isn’t just for kids; it also offers educator retreats to help schools support their teachers and create cohesive teams all focused in a common direction: their students.
Joe Cavanaugh started Youth Frontiers in 1987 after meeting a student named Diane who told him about being bullied at school. She said, “There are these kids at school who make fun of me every day. Can you do anything to stop them?”
That plea for help was the catalyst that inspired Cavanaugh to launch Youth Frontiers. At the core of every lesson is building communities steeped in every person treated with dignity and respect. And that starts with every child, every young person learning to love and respect themselves.
The motto of the organization states, “Youth Frontiers exists to inspire character and build communities. In community, we hold one another accountable for behaviors, and we stand up for one another. When we are connected and feel a sense of belonging, we treat people better. We treat ourselves better.”
Anna Sandstrom, a social worker at the school, said that after the presentations from Youth Frontiers, “There is a noticeable difference in the attitudes and actions of students. Anytime you develop a connection like this to entire classes, it absolutely has a positive effect on everyone.”
Leave a Reply