karate tucson

we had one of our substitute teachers, cindy mc canse who brought the idea to our administrative assistant. shethen turned it over to student council and we kind of ran with it. we were going topurchase a bench, but we're lucky that mrs. dominic, our counselor for soleng tom, already had a bench that she said she would donate to us. so, allwe had to do is go get samples of paint

which mr. dotson, our principal didfor us. we painted it our school colors. i've seen people on the playground justcome and sit on it. all different grades do it. they justkind of come and sit there. after awhile, a friend would come over. beforewe had completely finished the bench, it

was out there on display, outside myroom. i have actually seen fourth-graders come and sit down, andwatch that friendship going on in other classes. it was really awesome. i just think that it was a really good idea. it was fun in general making it becausepainting is fun. we went on to put the fingerprints of kindness on, to welcomeall students. every student in our school has a fingerprint on here. i like theidea that every person in the school has put their fingerprint on it and everyoneis a part of it. yeah, everyone is like a piece of it even when they move out to middle school. mine is right there. mine is right here. ours are next to each other. i felt that it was

really important that we had anexplanation of what our bench really was about. so, i came up with the saying andthen mrs. hall with her beautiful writing, was able to inscribe it on our benchfor us. when you're feeling lonely and don't know what to do, have a seat and a friend will come toyou. it means that someone could come over and have a friend, if you just sit on it. or if someone's new to the school and theydon't know anybody, they can come and people would see and think, oh there'ssomeone that doesn't have a friend. hasn't been here for a while,doesn't know very many people. i'll go make

friends. so that's now our friendship bench. soleng tom's friendship bench is awesome.