Crossroads School students have their own Rankin Cancer Run

Linnea Bartel, a Grade 8 student in the Three Cs Club - Crossroads Caring Coyotes — had a busy Friday afternoon helping with the Crossroads School’s Ranking Cancer Run.

She was outside on the tarmac behind the school as one of the music D.Js, having helped make up a playlist that was sure to get kids dancing.

Linnea, along with a large group of energetic and enthusiastic students, was helping out with the many activities organized for students to enjoy in addition to the run, or walk, or however they wanted to participate.

As a member of the Three Cs Club, Linnea’s role with most school events is to help provide music — which she says she loves — as well as being part of the set-up and cleaning crew.

“I help out at a lot of school events, fun ones, like this,” she says.

Linnea can’t help but understand the importance of this particular fundraiser though — like most families, hers has been touched by cancer. Her mother’s two grandparents died of cancer, and she says one of her friends lost her mother to cancer.

She knows the Rankin run helps fund research to prevent cancer, and develop programs that benefit cancer patients. “This is a fun thing to do, but it’s also something we do for the community,” she says.

The club is organized by teacher Michele Zoccoli for Grade 7 and 8 students.

Linnea’s mother Becky Bartel is a Kindergarten teacher at Crossroads, and was out helping the younger children. She says the students are very fortunate to have Michele Zoccoli, “who has so much energy and enthusiasm to organize an event like this that really brings us together, and the community together.”

Zoccoli says she believes strongly the importance involving the older students with school events, giving them the opportunity to learn about being part of their community, helping out with caring and kindness, and “taking visible leadership roles that younger students will see as something they to want to do as they get older.” 

The students want to be involved, she adds, and want to help others. “This club gives them an outlet to do that. You just need to ask them to do something and they do it. And the younger students watch them, and want to be part of it.”

At the other end of the grade spectrum, Becky Bartel is also teaching her young students about caring and kindness, and recently a little about cancer, so she could explain the Rankin Cancer Run to them.

“We start with those conversations at their level of understanding. We don’t want to scare them, but we do want them to understand why we’re doing this, and also teach them that even at their age, they can help people in a way that’s important in our community. What we want most is to promote caring and kindness, right here in our school, in our community and even beyond.”

Becky speaks of a trip she took to Africa, as part of a mission to help out in a school. “When I got back I talked about the children I met, and how we can help others who need our help. The kids remember the things I’ve told them about the children in Africa, and they still talk about ways to help them. They can take that with them out into the community, that they can help others,” she says.

It also helps the young students recognize that not all children are as fortunate as they are. “They learn not to take it for granted, and to share with others who are less fortunate. That is really important.”

While the teachers jokingly described Friday's playground scene for the fundraising event as “chaos,” they stress the afternoon is meant to be a fun one, with the kids encouraged to take part in the many activities available — sidewalk chalk drawing, face-painting, music and dancing, beach balls, a bubble machine, a parachute, a cheering squad and of course the run itself, with students given the opportunity to participate by moving around the track in whatever way they felt comfortable.

The Rankin family donates everything required to stage the run, including T-shirts, so every dollar raised goes to fighting cancer.