Students attended a kindness assembly on Oct. 31 where speaker Houston Kraft spoke about the power of kindness. Freshmen and sophomores attended during second period, and juniors and seniors during third period.

English teacher Benjamin Stroud and senior student council officer Maddie Edwards gave a preface before Kraft’s presentation.

“As a teacher, I get up every day, I get dressed and come to this school for you students,” Stroud said. “You can change the world and be the kindness and humanity that the world needs now. The change starts with you.”

Kraft travels to speak to students around the country about the importance of kindness, share his experiences and to show how it affects the lives of others.

“Right now, I don’t think we’re real good at being good to each other,” Kraft said. “Right now, it feels like we’re incompetent at it.”

During his senior year of high school, Kraft and his friends started a club called RAKE, standing for Random Acts of Kindness etc. There were two rules: rule one being you had to meet someone new and rule two to leave the person better than you found them. This club helped its members meet new people and made the school a kinder place.

“I believe in kindness, and I believe that it makes the world a better place,” Kraft said. “It’s one of those things that’s important. But there’s a gap between what we believe and what we actually do.”

Kraft spoke personally and simply, connecting with the audience through personal stories, questions and examples. He challenged students to make kindness into their new “normal,” and make someone’s day better every day.

“The central message that I want to leave the students of Hebron with is that kindness isn’t normal in our world, and I think that we can all agree that’s a problem,” Kraft said. “We could complain, or get frustrated or upset, but at the end of the day, the only way that we make kindness normal in the world is if we do the intentional, practical, hard work of making kindness normal for ourselves. Nice is different than kind. Nice is reactive, kindness is proactive, which means we’re not waiting for something. We’re not waiting until it feels good or it’s comfortable or convenient. We show up every day looking for opportunities to be better at this massive, critical, meaningful idea of love.”