Purdue athletes kick off school's Great Kindness Challenge week with surprise visit

Noe Padilla, Lafayette Journal & Courier
·2 min read
Purdue athletes welcome students of Klondike Elementary School as part of the school's Great Kindness Challenge Week, on Monday, Jan. 24, 2022, in West Lafayette.
Purdue athletes welcome students of Klondike Elementary School as part of the school's Great Kindness Challenge Week, on Monday, Jan. 24, 2022, in West Lafayette.

LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Students at Klondike Elementary were in for a big surprise Monday morning as athletes from Purdue University greeted them with signs and offered high-fives to any child who wanted them.

The athletes visited the elementary school as part of the school’s Great Kindness Challenge, which is a weeklong event aimed at providing a positive bullying prevention program, improving the school climate and increasing student engagement.

“When I first started here, I thought, I’m going to look into something that kind of fits with the Klondike mission of community and just that sense of building up relationships, and I came across the Great Kindness Challenge, which I saw was world-renowned," said Brianna Morrissey, the student service coordinator at Klondike Elementary.

Grace Walsh, a senior on Purdue University's women’s soccer team and the director of outreach of the student-athlete advisory committee, holds the signs she used to welcome students of Klondike Elementary School as part of the school's Great Kindness Challenge Week, on Monday, Jan. 24, 2022, in West Lafayette. Walsh is also the director of outreach of the student-athlete advisory committee.

"I found that it was super important because here we have a ton of different diversity in our population and I thought how cool it is to do something that’s done all over the world but here at our big school."

Trending now: Scouting Purdue women's basketball at No. 8 Michigan

As part of the Great Kindness Challenge, students are given a checklist full of kind tasks like smiling at 25 people, making a new friend, picking up 10 pieces of trash, and many more, as a way to motivate and get the students excited for the challenge week.

There is also a different theme to each day of the Great Kindness Challenge week. Monday’s theme was Team-up for Kindness; Tuesday, Read-up on Kindness; Wednesday, Dress Like Your Favorite Elderly Friend; Thursday, Klondike Encourages Spirit Day; and on Friday, the Kindness Matters celebration.

“We have themes throughout the week and teachers will be pulling from those themes to do things within their classrooms. We actually have some grade-level projects going on too, like I know our second graders are going to be doing read-out-loud for their classmates,” said Morrissey.

As part of Monday’s Team-up for Kindness Day, Morrissey reached out to a wide variety of Purdue coaches to see if any of their athletes would be interested in participating in Klondike's event.

'Keep the momentum': Purdue students march to continue #Metoo conversation

About 10 athletes, representing Boilermaker volleyball, swimming and soccer, came out to welcome the students.

“I think sometimes school can be a little tough and obviously waking and coming to school in the snow isn’t always the most exciting thing. So just being able to do these small things like greeting them in the morning and starting their day off on a positive note, I think is definitely helpful for them,” said Grace Walsh, a senior on Purdue’s women’s soccer team and the director of outreach of the student-athlete advisory committee.

Noe Padilla is a reporter for the Journal & Courier. Email him at Npadilla@jconline.com and follow him on Twitter at 1NoePadilla.

This article originally appeared on Lafayette Journal & Courier: Purdue athletes kick off Klondike's Great Kindness Challenge week