What’s is your favorite food? This question marks the online debut of Student Council’s Positivity Project. Direct message your response to @rbkstudentcouncil or @rhinebeckhighschool on Instagram before 2 PM Wednesday, May 6th, and we’ll add it to our online version of the happiness board.

The Positivity Project began in February when Student Council redecorated the pin board across from the lunch line. With the goal of encouraging positive thinking, Student Council officers visited students’ lunch tables throughout the week and asked, what makes you happy? We collected a vibrant variety of responses, from “Papa John’s” to “seratonin.” On Monday Morning, students had the opportunity to see their responses arranged on the happiness board.

Later that day, students debriefed about the Positivity Project at one of Student Council’s town hall meetings. The consensus was positive. Senior John Jackson commented that, “someone wrote my name on the board, and it made my day.”

With that and other enthusiastic reviews in mind, Student Council decided to continue the project with the question what is your favorite song? We repeated our process: visiting lunch tables and collecting written responses throughout the week of March 9th.

Unfortunately, school closed that Friday, March 13th, and students didn’t get the chance to see their responses in person. Instead, Student Council collected all the favorite songs in the RHS Spotify Playlist.

Student Council decided that now – more than ever – we should focus on encouraging positive thinking. So the Positivity Project will continue this week with our new question: what is your favorite food? Student Council will experiment with designing a virtual happiness board to display your responses online.

Student Council hopes that everyone in the Rhinebeck community is staying safe and healthy.

And we hope that soon there will be no need for a virtual happiness board – that we’ll be able to stand together in the lunch line again, not necessarily six feet apart, with no worries greater than the math test next period, and admire the happiness board in person.