Students at Halstead Elementary School spent Tuesday afternoon being neighborly, raking leaves and cleaning up yards for residents across town.
300 students and staff spent the afternoon doing a community service project, giving back to the community and saying thank you for a year of support from the community.
"We're just helping people rake up their leaves," said Waylon Homewood, a fifth grader. "Helping with the community."
The school's counselor said they've been teaching expanded lessons on kindness all year long - this "field trip" was one of the results of those lessons.
"They are working on kindness right now in the fifth grade, so it's good they can work on it and put it into perspective here," said SArina Kletecka, the school counselor. "Look how happy they are to clean some leaves."
The students are now on Thanksgiving break through the weekend, but school leaders said they'd hoped students took the lessons that afternoon to put thanks and giving ahead of football and food this holiday.
Based on the reactions from students, it seems like that was successful.
"I think we should be helping out more people," said Ian Pierce, a fifth grader. "Because there's people that's just rude or making fun of somebody for something they can't do."