COURAJ Goes To School

Hey! Hey!

It’s Chris, just dropping in to let you know about our recent visit to Athlos Leadership Academy. Last Tuesday we had the opportunity to speak to 500-600 students, 2nd-9th grade, over 6 different periods, 45 mins each.

It was COOL! Here is how we did it:

I broke the ice by making all the students BOO me as loud as they could. BOOOOOO!!! I told them that the last class was better and made them do it again. Why not? They loved it.
Intro to COURAJ
The Couraj Kickstarter video
15 mins learning about personal greatness, understanding fear, fear of risk vs fear of the unknown, fear of failure, taking action, and the importance of the journey.
Intro to Mitch Bergsma. We then played his COURAJ video. Mitch was in Columbia and couldn’t make it.
Ross O. Brown came up and talked about having the courage to create. He then played his new song titled, EVERYTHING STARTS WITH A DREAM. (3 of 6 classes started a clap to the song.)
Dylan Harryman came up next, with lessons on overcoming adversity and how he’s training for his first bodybuilding competition in April. Dylan only has one arm.
I then wrapped it up by explaining the meaning of our logo, Lion Chief. I gave them all stickers of Lion Chief and told them to stick it somewhere where they can see it everyday and remember to be Lion Chiefs.

We had a lot of funny things happen. One in particular I remember is this… I would ask the students how long it took to build the pyramids… I would always follow with, “We don’t really know, but we do know they were built BRICK BY BRICK.” Well, when I asked the 3rd graders, a young man raised his hand and said with all the confidence in the world, “4,127 years.” His look and tone were SO convincing. Another funny one was after the 2nd graders. We had a little time remaining and opened it up for questions. The first boy to speak asked if he could get up and share an example of a fear of the unknown. He came up and said, “One time I was opening a present from my brother and I found a bee hive in it.” OHHHH it was on then! All the 2nd graders raised their hands wanting to talk about presents they have received.

We had a blast!

Stay Courajeous,

-CD