Project Theme: Relationship and community-building

Target Audience and Location: Teachers and students at Rancho High School in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Mission: Fostering connections within the school community through fun, cost-free and community-building focused opportunities to create a more caring and connected school environment and culture.

Project Description: Scholar Runzhi Hu and educator Scholar Susan Potts aim to foster and increase positive, caring connections between students and teachers. Runzhi shared that this is important to her because, “strong connections between teachers and students helps to rebuild our community after the loss of connections due to distance learning from the pandemic and will help create a more welcoming environment for incoming students.”

Their project is focused on building connections through the implementation of a month of specific and targeted offerings and opportunities that included an anonymous candy-gram style pen pal program between students and teachers which culminated in a Connection Café for their 160+ participants. Ms. Potts reflected that the activities really helped to start a healing process for their school community in relation to the devastating impacts of the ongoing pandemic and remote learning.