This past week was the beginning of one of my favorite community partnerships with Great Bend Reads with USD 428!

The book, “The Wild Robot” takes the reader on quite an adventure of exploring, learning, and change. For my part, we discussed why it is important for us to have friends and to be a good friend. 

We discuss the importance of listening carefully and attentively to understand someone with a different point of view. We also discuss the importance of our own words in talking with others by being polite, being respectful, and being aware of how our words impact others. It is ok to talk about hard topics or not like a way someone spoke to you but there are better ways to handle this than yelling and stomping our feet to get our way.

A good part of our discussion is around how we can be kind to others by smiling, using our good manners, and looking for ways to help others.

We are all different with different points of view. Life would be boring if we were all the same and the students work through an exercise of finding things they have in common with classmates. 

As I tell the students, we all like to have friends and we need to be a good friend. I ask for one thing that they will try for the next week to be a good friend to someone else.

Perhaps, there is a lesson in this for each of us.

Keep learning. Keep showing grace and kindness.

Michelle Beran is the 4-H and Youth Development Agent for the Cottonwood District, Barton County office. For more information on this article or other 4-H Youth and Development related questions email Michelle at mberan@ksu.eduor call 620-793-1910.