Eugene Field celebrates seventh annual Leadership Day

Community members came out for the seventh annual Eugene Field Leadership Day on Friday as students showcased what they’ve learned this school year.

This year, the theme was “Be the Change.” Students presented about the seven habits and paradigms of leadership, and projects they’ve done during the school year.

Students spoke about big projects such as collecting caps for a buddy bench, donating over 1,600 pairs of socks to homeless veterans, and organizing a week to celebrate acts of kindness.

The buddy bench program is a partnership with the Kiwanis Club for all R-I elementary schools. Eugene Field students put together a commercial that went out on Facebook asking for caps.

They also collected, cleaned and organized eight bags of caps. They needed 250 pounds of plastic to make the bench.

They received more than necessary and donated the extras to the other elementary schools in the district.

The bench arrived in January and is in place on the playground.

In December, students set a goal to collect 1,000 pairs of socks. They were donated to the John J. Pershing VA Medical Center to be given to homeless veterans in the area. Collectively, the first grade students collected 610 pairs; the second grade 456 pairs; and third grade 510 pairs.

The goal of the project was to teach students about the importance of giving.

More recently, students found a way to celebrate acts of kindness with the 100 Acts of Kindness challenge. In the 10 days leading up to Valentine’s Day, the students recognized over 130 acts. It came out of Kristen Clements’ third grade student class doing a kindness challenge in the time leading up to Christmas. The response from the school encouraged them to do a schoolwide project.

“Kindness is very important in your life,” Third-grade yearbook leader Jakoby Tippen said. “It means saying kind words and doing kind things for others.”

These acts included sharing candy, volunteering to help teachers, picking up trash, helping others with their leadership binders and playing with others who were lonely.

The students grew a kindness tree as part of the challenge with each act serving as a leaf on the tree.

Principal Jennifer Taylor said the annual leadership day is like a year in review for the school.

She said conversations about the theme start the year before as administration discusses inspiring phrases that relate to the school.

Part of the goal of the leadership program is for students to have an impact on the school. Through this, the school has different leadership teams such as yearbook, gardening and photography.

“We try to come up with fun and engaging teams that students will find interesting and want to participate in, but truly contribute to things that benefit our school,” Taylor said. “If it’s a job that a kid can do, we try to relinquish control to them to do it.”