This morning, students K-5th grade at Rutland Town School had their first assembly in almost three years! Al, the Respect Guy, came all the way from Maui, Hawaii, to teach the students about ROAR (Respect Others, Act Responsibly). Al, a talented speaker, musician, and comedian, brought laughter, excitement, and fun for the students while teaching them about respect and inclusivity. The first group was K-2nd grade and the second group was 3rd-5th grade. Al played music, told stories, and even brought up students to help share his message. The first part of his presentation, Al shared a story about how when he was a kid, he accidently broke his neighbor’s window playing baseball with his friends. This showed the students that it’s okay to make mistakes, as long as you apologize and show respect to the person(s) you may have hurt. In his next demonstration, he had students and Mr. Schneider (for the first group) and Mr. Hescock (for the second group) come up to show that while people may look different, but in the end, we are all still people. He even used a magic trick with pieces of rope that were different sizes at the start, but he changed them into being the same length; we are all the same. Next, he used handkerchiefs representing to respect others, respect the environment, and respect property. He chose one student from the audience to come up to help him. They used their ROAR attitude to magically tie the handkerchiefs together! For his last message, Al had a paper heart, representing that each of us has a heart, a mind, and free will. But when we disrespect someone, their heart can be broken. Using his magical talent, after ripping up the paper heart, he was able to mend it back together to show that if we apologize and respect our friends, ourselves, and others, we can mend what we may have broken.
Overall, his message was powerful, fun, and exciting. You could hear the chatter from the students as they left the gymnasium. Such an amazing presentation and RTS would like to thank Al for coming all this way! Check out the highlights below!
