Buddy Bench at North Rich

 

 

Avery Kohl had big dreams of growing up to be a humanitarian. Through kindness, she wanted to help the world. When, at the age of 10, Avery passed away in a UTV accident, her friends and family created Avery’s Dream Foundation to fulfill her important dream. Her foundation encourages kindness, inclusion and service to people in need socially, emotionally or physically.  We create Kindness Clubs , and hope to spread the clubs as far and wide as our funds will allow. The focus of these clubs is to encourage young people to be kind by being inclusive of lonely class mates and by performing other acts of kindness. Lastly, to date we have donated twelve Buddy Benches, with plans to donate another eleven in October and November, 2021. 

Buddy Benches have been proven to be an inexpensive and effective method to curb playground isolation in grades kindergarten through sixth grade. There are two types of troubled children, extroverts and introverts. Extroverts are easy to spot and are typically disruptive and therefore get much funding and resources.  Introverted troubled children are quit, spend time in isolation and seldom get good help. In studies, Buddy Benches have been found to be a great tool to reduce the number of isolated children, i.e. lonely, friendless children during lunch as recess. When lonely children muster enough courage to sit on a Buddy Bench, they declare to their playground world, “I need a friend”. This wordless declaration is answered by good classmates eager to kindly invite them to play, to be included. The seed of friendship and kindness is planted and quickly playground isolation decreases. 

The Buddy Bench was delivered to our school on Monday December 6, 2021, at 10:45am.

We had a short assembly where Jasonn & Jennifer Kohl, a connection to a student in our school, talked to the children about the purpose of the Buddy Bench and movement behind it and its proper use on our playground.  

Student's role-played scenarios of proper ways to use the bench, including sitting on the bench when you don't have anyone to play with, inviting those on the bench to come and play and the person on the bench having the right to decline the invitation to play and remain sitting on the bench. Then the bench was placed by students outside at the NRE playground. 

 We are honored to be the recipients of this generous gift. The children have been thrilled to have the opportunity to use the Buddy Bench and are committed to make sure everyone has a buddy to play with at recess. To show our appreciation and gratitude, and in honor of Avery Kohl, NRE will be performing acts of service during the month of December and will be writing their services on a red stocking on our NRE Service Stocking wall.

 Brittney Lundgren School Counselor, North Rich Elementary & Rich Middle School

blundgren@richschool.org

Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all. ~Aristotle