Gratitude in Action: GSB’s Second Annual Gratitude Day 

The Gill St. Bernard's community came together for the second annual Gratitude Day on Wednesday, April 9, 2025, engaging students in Grades 7 through 12 in a variety of activities that promoted service and gratitude. 

The day began with GSB Alum Paul Mulcahy ’19 speaking to a packed auditorium in the Matthews Family Theater of the Performing Arts and Community Center about his personal experience embracing gratitude and incorporating service into his daily life. 

“It’s amazing the shift in perspective that takes place in your mind when you reframe how you approach your struggles from “I have to” into “I get to,” Mulcahy said. “When you are facing homework or practice, or later in life when you are dealing with car payments and insurance, simply saying “I get to” do the homework or “I am able to” pay the bills and bringing gratitude into even the smallest parts of your daily life reframes how you think about those activities—and about your life.” 

Gratitude Day grew out of a Spring Unit, RU Grateful, which ran three years ago and which was created in partnership with Mulcahy and the Upper School’s Grateful 4 Club (G4 Club). The success of that Unit morphed into a formalized Gratitude Day for the entire Upper School last year. This year, the program expanded to include Seventh and Eighth Graders, and former community members such as longtime Lower School Teacher Sarah Swartz and Jim Mershon, husband of former GSB teacher and administrator Brett Mershon, who volunteered to clean up the Brett Mershon Tranquility Garden. 

“Last year we spent the afternoon doing a variety of service projects that were very impactful both to our campus community and to the wider Morris/Somerset County communities,” said Head Librarian Kristen Armstrong P ’21, ’29, ’36. “Today, we are thrilled that we were able to include the Seventh and Eighth Graders and that each student will be completing two community service projects. That is so much good that we are putting out into the world!” 

Students participated in a wide variety of service activities over the course of the event including: 

• Painting kindness rocks for Overlook Hospital  
• Weaving friendship bracelets and creating prom vision boards for students at iHope  
• Assisting farm staff with composting in the Home Winds Farm garden  
• Cleaning up the Mershon Tranquility Garden   
• Creating fleece blankets for Project Linus 
• Building breakfast bags for Nourish NJ 
• Creating cards for mothers in a domestic violence facility, active-duty military personnel, senior citizens, and Cards for Kidz 
• Making blankets, coloring, reading, and planting bulbs around campus with the GSB Lower Schoolers 
• Making dog toys to be donated to local animal shelters by the For Love of Animals Club 
• Making lasagna for Lasagna Love and the Food Bank of Somerset County 
• Organizing bagged lunches and hygiene kits for Elijah's Promise 
• Building a sound board for the GSB Early Childhood Playground 
• Building vegetable bins for the Home Winds Farmstand 

“It made me feel really good to know that I made other people happy today,” said Addy Platt ’26. “My group made a sound board for the Lower School playground. When we brought it over, all of the little kids gave us hugs—they were so adorable! And the teachers were so excited.” 

As Mulcahy said so eloquently: “You never know the ripple effect of even the smallest act of kindness. Service can have an incredible impact right here in your own community and in your own backyard.” The end result of Gratitude Day is a dynamic ripple effect in our local community, radiating out from GSB and ending farther away than we can imagine.  

Thank you to Braelyn Brandl ’26 for designing this year’s Gratitude Day t-shirt. A big thank you also to Maurice Boyd ’26 and the G4 Club members for all of your help with the planning, to Upper School Director Dr. Joel Coleman P ’22 and Lower and Middle School Director Kyle Armstrong P ’21, ’29, ’36 for making the space in the schedule for this important day, to the teachers for their support, and of course, to all of the students who helped to set up for the day and who participated in spreading goodwill into the world.  

While each group only got to see the two projects that they worked on, when everyone took a step back and looked at the cumulative impact of what GSB achieved, the results were stunning. The day was truly a community event.  

Enjoy our photo gallery from the day, below!