School group helps create chain reaction of kindness | Centre Daily Times

BELLEFONTE When one person does a good deed, Bellefonte Area Middle School Principal Sommer Garman said it triggers a series of good deeds from other students.

The Chain Reaction Club was started at the school four years ago to help accentuate the positives students can do at school and in the community.

It’s something separate from the school’s Positive Behavior Program, but has the same mission.

“I can honestly say I don’t think there are students who aren’t buying into it,” Garman said. “I don’t hear or see kids bashing it, and it’s just a way, and their goal to spread a chain reaction, as cliché as that may be, of doing good things and creating leaders.”

Garman said the idea to create such a club was sparked by four seventh-grade students who are now high school sophomores: Lizzie and Natalie Giacobe, Meg Irwin and Anna Scott.

The group helps organize events like blood drives, food drives and more throughout the school year.

They also recently made birdseed wreathes to decorate homes near the middle school.

The club was inspired by Rachel’s Challenge, which is a program that works to reduce violence. It was started by the family of Rachel Scott — a victim of the Columbine High School shooting in 1999 in Colorado.

The Chain Reaction Club has about 50 middle school students who are under the direction of teacher Jennifer Kerr.

“They wanted a group that could help create a chain reaction of kindness,” Garman said.

“Middle school can be a miserable time in life, but to see them and think of the group of kids; it’s not just one genre of students,” Garman said. “We have every type of student. It’s one area where they don’t have to worry about a clique.”