FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS / BLOG
HOW LONG IS A TYPICAL ASSEMBLY SHOW?
Assemblies generally run 45 minutes (but can be adjusted as you need) and are filled with audience participation and strong educational themes about kindness and behavioral dynamics amidst the laughs. I work with each school to incorporate into the show messages from current ideas about kindness themes being promoted at that particular school.
Please note that the ‘full day experience’ is the assembly followed by class visits where I go into classes to further discuss the ideas for 15 minutes at a time. Please inquire for more information!
DO YOU OFFER OTHER MESSAGES other than kindness?
Absolutely. I live 100% drug, alcohol, caffeine, and tobacco free, so I can speak from firsthand experience about being drug free, and serve as an adult role model for your student body. In addition. I am asked occasionally to speak and tie in juggling to topics in science and math (juggling is a great tie in here!)
HOW DO YOU GUARANTEE IMPACT with the students you serve?
Focusing on each school individually definitely helps. In addition, after every show I send a video to the school to distribute to every student to reinforce the messages covered in the show. This gives students something by which to remember the show and also allows parents to understand the content of the assembly and the messages being shared with their children. I also send signed posters to every school after the event date too.
WHAT SIZE AUDIENCE IS BEST FOR YOUR SHOW?
I can perform for any size audience, from a dozen, to multiple thousands of students. I find that for most schools, a group of 350-500 students is a perfect size and many schools will book two assemblies if they have larger student populations. They split the school in half for two assemblies. I don’t charge extra for that.
DO YOU NEED A SOUND SYSTEM??
Greg provides his own microphone which he plugs into your school’s sound system. Beyond that he is entirely self contained! For virtual of course, we are automatically good to go.
BLOG POSTS about Kindness Assemblies for Schools…
FALL 2025
I am on a mission, and yesterday was one of the best days ever.
When I'm not doing traditional keynotes, I am often everywhere in the United States, speaking to young people about the idea that it is always possible to be kind. I discuss how we can always increase how kind we are to ourselves and to people who are different than we are, and enhance our kindness in school, at home, and in our communities.
I don’t often post about these events because the speaking industry is rooted far too often in money and ego. I get swept up in it constantly. It is focused on the importance of big stages, big fees, and big interaction on social media posts (even if those posts are essentially devoid of any real content). Quite honestly, speaking even part time to young people, let alone going on tour as an initiative, doesn’t carry the social capital as my being onstage once in front of thousands.
It’s ridiculous to not share about the events I do, because touring on this theme has shown itself to be both transformative for students and an effective mission of active resistance amidst a status quo world that is increasingly intense, mean-spirited, and generally unkind. Students aren’t oblivious to the intensity and posturing that famous people, our leaders, their opposition, and the news media are presenting.
My goal is to create a revolution of kindness. And after talking to tens of thousands of students across the country, I see it making a direct impact on the schools and students I visit. This touring is why the first of my seven strategies in my book is to believe in the possibility of kindness.
So that brings us to yesterday.
Fossil, Oregon. Population 400. This was a repeat visit to the town. This community has a heart of absolute gold. It is quiet here. There’s one blinking traffic light in the center of town. There used to be car dealerships, beauty parlors, and other amenities, but years ago, when the Kinzua lumber mill shut down, the dynamics of the town changed. What matters most is what’s left. And what is left are incredible people who welcome me as a friend. A copy of my book is in the town library, which shares a small building with city hall. People check in to make sure I am finding vegan snacks. It’s really good.
I’ve spoken to the students in Fossil for multiple years, at all ages from the youngest in the town through high school seniors, about why kindness matters and why we all — myself included — need to be practicing our methods of kindness so that we are ready for moments when it seems challenging or even impossible to be good to one another due to frustration, insecurity, or outside influence. I always position myself as someone in need of these lessons, too — never as a guru who has all the answers. I tell them we are all working on this, all trying to get better. We are in this together.
Yesterday, while speaking to a particularly captivated and engaged group of all the third- and fourth-graders (a combined total of 15 students), students asked where I was speaking next. I explained that my next tour stop was to speak to all of the students in Ione, Oregon (population 320 or so), an hour and a half away. The students asked if I was staying overnight. I said, “Yes.” There was a dramatic pause. Energy shifted.
Students excitedly started raising their hands, and one girl asked if I would consider coming to their soccer game that night to watch them play. I said yes. The room erupted with excitement. My night was set. The visiting team were being driven in from Spray, Oregon (population 141). There weren’t enough Spray students to fill half of the field, so some of the Fossil students would be playing along with them to balance out the teams.
Hours later, I was hanging out with what amounted in total to about a quarter of the population of Fossil, watching soccer. The entire third and fourth grade soccer team turned to me and waved excitedly in unison as their game started. We adults all stood and cheered them on, watching kids play soccer as the sun was setting over the fossil beds in the hills in back of the high school. It was incredible.
I stood around talking with people about my work on kindness , hearing about their lives and experiences with their work on ranches, discussing our similarities in terms of what we valued, laughing about our differences (me, who splits his time bi-coastally and who basically keeps Alaska Airlines’ profits intact, and many of the local people who have been here in one place for generations). The games were perfect small-town athletics. Parents cheering on kids. A referee who did his best and who wasn’t critiqued too loudly by anyone for fear that they then might be asked to take over as ref themselves. It started to get dark, and the game ended in what seemed to be a tie. No one seemed very concerned about the winning nearly as much as the playing itself.
Later, I spent the night in a bed and breakfast on a ranch a few miles from town, the house itself having been ordered from a Sears and Roebuck catalog in 1910. It had been delivered by train across the country, from Chicago to Condon, Oregon, and then delivered the remaining twenty-two miles by horse and buggy to the location where it sits today. The host made me vegan muffins in the morning. We sat and talked about life on the ranch, why kindness matters, and what we can do to build a better now. Her little one will be playing soccer starting next year. He is two now. The cycle continues.
I told the students of Fossil that the adults in the world today aren’t in control of the world those students will inherit. They just think they are. The world of the future belongs to the students and the young people of the country. I spoke to high school students in Beaverton, Oregon, last year who told me they were really upset that this world had been handed to them filled with the endless conflicts of social media and the weight of environmental chaos. They questioned my generation and the generation before mine for not doing enough to circumvent these things.
In Fossil, I reminded students that if they don’t like the way the world feels in terms of how they see people treating one another (and they don’t) that we can change that, starting in the school, at home, and in town in terms of how we act and react to others, and how we absorb and react to information we experience online. We can define how we want to live, rather than having life defined for us. Empowerment is waiting for us to embrace. The spectacle of the world around us doesn’t have to be a rulebook for how we live. We can do better. All of us can, myself included.
Students tell me again and again that they want a world filled with connection and kindness and happiness for one another, not hate and rivalry and the other messaging that they too often hear from media and adults. I love that I get to have discussions where I am part of, and present in, the hopes coming from their clear-thinking minds and willing hearts. Every day is a new chapter in an unfolding story that is teaching me so much about a completely other strand — one of a desire to actually be good to one another — that is woven into the fabric of this country.
I’m currently working on a new book exploring all of these experiences, specifically a book for young people to read with their parents and teachers. I plan to be sharing this across the country in a particularly unique way within the next year. More on that soon.
For now, onto the next town.
NATIONWIDE ASSEMBLIES:
From Where Does My Inspiration Originate?
From 1964 to 1971, my mom taught elementary school in inner city Philadelphia in a school so rough that teachers feared for their personal safety and substitutes often only made it to 10AM before quitting. Amidst that environment, my mom, fresh out of college and determined to educate and inspire, ignored the advice given by her new colleagues and forged a path of creative education that lasted for six truly innovative years.
She started a program of school assemblies for students though she had been told that students not only wouldn’t be interested, but for safety’s sake shouldn’t be in the same room together at the same time. She decided that students just needed a chance and for someone to believe in them. She decided to do assemblies and would get the student body together and read them poetry and Grimm’s Fairy Tales every week. Many had never had anyone read to them before. The students loved it.
When students did well in their studies, she would celebrate with them by throwing disco dance parties where she allowed the kids to dance on their desks. She took her classes on field trips, unheard of in the school, and the students would dress up as best they could, many never having been out of their neighborhoods before.
When I began speaking to students across the United States about Tthe Possibility of Kindness (a concept I talk about in my book), I knew the appeal would be nationwide. But this week, it was a tremendous honor to return to a neighborhood very close to where my mom taught in Philadelphia in the 1960s and work with and speak to an incredible group of two hundred 6th through 8th graders at William H. Hunter Elementary School.
Capturing the attention of young people is about speaking to them about ideas that matter, and doing it with sincerity and a determination to share and connect. I spent the entire day at the school, going into classes, connecting with students one-on-one at times, speaking about kindness and asking them what their dreams were and how they could take action on those dreams and build a better now to better influence the future they wanted someday.
Two nights ago, I sat with my mom and Stephanie in Pennsylvania and we asked her about her time as a teacher. Her stories were astounding and reflected being innovative, risk-taking, and purely renegade. She was a revolutionary thinker, and inspirer of hundreds of students over the years she was teaching. We sat in awe as she told stories of all the things she did for her students even in the midst of what conventional wisdom or better judgment might have advised otherwise.
