​Our first task of the year, since 20 of our girls were new to the team, was team-building and goal setting .  We had a team retreat on October 20th, 2017, with our coordinator and 14 of our team members.   Our goal was to get to know each other, divide into teams and lay out our projects for the year.  We were taught about mindfulness and we ate  together and did Qi Gong.  By the end of the day, we knew each other better and knew what our mission was and had several projects planned to help us achieve our goal of a more peaceful school. ​ We decided to meet as a whole team once a week on Fridays in a room that our coordinator reserved for us.  We met much more often as teams depending on the project that was coming up.   

During our retreat many members of the team were newly introduced to mindfulness. It is challenging to work with this many students who are high achievers and involved in other clubs and committees and get everyone together for planning and training.  On the other hand, having more team members could allow us to do more for our school.   Even though we are all busy and pulled in many directions, no one wanted to drop any part of the project but it is a challenge getting people to meetings. We realized also that we needed to break into smaller groups in order to get more done and have more accountability.  The GBLA team from last year left us with some advice and lessons learned that we will continue to reflect on as we work on our project this year.​