Two dozen students from South Africa, Tibet and Seattle perched on every surface in the lobby of the Getty Images building in Fremont, watching Jennifer Geist as she paced across what was left of the floor, trying to articulate the enormity of what was going to happen that weekend.

“Tell me,” she said, “What are some of the biggest moments of the past century?”

Answers flooded from every perspective in the room, from Martin Luther King’s “I have a Dream” speech to the Dalai Lama’s exile in 1959. Jennifer nodded in encouragement, after each response, her dark hair swinging around her ears. “Exactly, exactly,” she said, “‘Seeds of Compassion’ is trying to be the same thing. Essentially they’re trying to jumpstart a movement.”

Geist, the school program director for an organization called Bridges to Understanding, helped bring together student journalists from all over the world for Seeds of Compassion, a massive five-day event intended to inspire kindness and global thinking in the next generation. Crowds filled Key Arena and Quest Field from April 12th through the 18th, drawn by celebrities like Dave Matthews and icons like the Dalai Lama, who spoke about how kindness could fit into everyday life.

The Tuesday before the start of the event, the building buzzed with Geist’s enthusiasm as the students prepared for something amazing.

But six days later on Seeds’ “Children’s Day” at Key Arena, kids from across Washington state were not getting the message. A parade of men in suits had already welcomed the Dalai Lama to Seattle, and when Mayor Nichols stood up to talk, Garfield freshman Ajalee Pulley tucked a fist under her chin and prepared to drift off to sleep.

“Let me know when the Dalai Lama starts talking,” she mumbled as an afterthought to fellow freshman Brandon Jimerson, “in case there’s an assignment.” But as he watched another performer take the stage, Jimerson’s mind went blank, and he rested his chin on the top of Pulley’s head and let his eyes close.

Sophomores Nina Pascucci and Haley Adams sat in a pack of sleepy first graders, their feet against the seats in front of them, leaning back and squinting to make out what was happening on stage. “When I first heard about Seeds I thought it would be a really amazing experience,” she says, “but when I got there it was a show.”

The Dalai Lama fidgeted in an armchair onstage as people sang his praises, watching as students fell back behind a wall of idolatry. The most powerful piece of the Dalai Lama’s persona, his humanity, was being sucked away. When was it finally his turn, his Holiness the Dalai Lama became just another distant speaker; the students settled back as waves of long words and complicated concepts washed over them.

“I was really excited to go, and the messages were important…” Jimerson said.” His voice trailed off, as though trying to remember what exactly was important about them.

“But what did the Dalai Lama do to break it down?” Pulley cut in, “I had no idea what he was saying — and how many of the little kids in the front even knew who he was?”

The first-graders that Pascucci and Adams were sitting with, from West Seattle’s Cooper Elementary, who curled up in the corner of their plush red seats and blew absentmindedly on silver pinwheels, knew exactly who the Dalai Lama was. Their teacher, Lillian Woo-Adams, has been telling them all year.

Teaching kindness and respect has been a way for Woo-Adams to handle the behavior of students who often come from unstable homes. The kids are angry when they get to school; they’ll hit someone for looking at them funny. “All these kids are good, they just need to be valued and respected,” she said. “They haven’t been dealt a lot of compassion, and they can’t give what they haven’t received.”

On the playground of Cooper Elementary, a boy fell down and his playmate stopped to help him up. “Ms. Woo! Ms. Woo!” a girl named Caitlin cried, pointing to the boys. “I just saw Elijah do an act of compassion!”

Woo-Adams nodded, and when they returned to the classroom Caitlin painstakingly wrote what Elijah had done on a Post-It. Carefully, she placed it under his name on the compassion chart on the bulletin board. Elijah smiled when he saw, and, Caitlin scampered back to her seat.

“Compassion” has become a popular word in Woo-Adams’ class since she discovered the Seeds curriculum online a few months before the event. She uses the word as a way to combine the messages of sharing kindness and respect she has taught the kids all year.

Using a mixture of her own lessons and suggestions from Seeds, she taught her students about the Dalai Lama, they role-played actions of compassion and identified feelings of empathy in books. Most of all, Woo-Adams made sure they knew they had the power to help.

When a girl dropped a box of crayons and her tablemates immediately jumped up to help, Woo-Adams jumped on the chance to make a point. “See? Look, that’s compassion; you guys do it all the time.” She told the class, “It doesn’t matter how old you are, everyone is capable.”

The ring of Woo-Adams’ bell cut through the shrill chatter in her classroom on the morning of “Children’s Day.” Wearing matching white t-shirts, the kids wriggled with excitement in their seats as their teacher sped through the rules and reminders, anxious to see the man they’d heard so much about. But when the Dalai Lama finally spoke, they couldn’t connect. “It was way over their heads; it was boring,” Woo-Adams said. “They were sitting way up, far away from him. They should have let kids onstage and had them sit around the Dalai Lama and ask him questions. Then even the kids who couldn’t be onstage could watch people their age.”

For two Guatemalan middle-school girls named Daisy and Holly, this made all the difference. As part of a cultural parade from Bridges to Understanding, the girls carried a scarf, woven and embroidered by the mothers of their village, to the Dalai Lama. “It was amazing to be in his presence,” Holly said. “It was like the rest of the stadium dropped away.”

Geist says that human interaction was what was missing from Seeds, and what made it fall short of expectations. She found more in the smaller workshops that surrounded Seeds’ big events. “The inter-group dialogue is where it got very personal,” she said. “This is where people began to see other people as humans they could be, this is where the sparks you go out and use later come from.”

For students who could not make it to the little workshops, the massive events were not enough. When they did not get the message at an important event it caused many students to doubt themselves. “Maybe we need to be older,” freshman Brianna Ross said, frowning. “Maybe we’ll look back when we’re older and are making decisions and use it then.”

With this attitude, many students are giving up on understanding the basic messages. “It’s over,” said another freshman, Marcel Davis, “And no one has said ‘Dalai Lama’ in this school since.”

This is what worries Pascucci. “The Dalai Lama isn’t saying he’s going to make the change for us. He’s giving us ideas on how to live our lives, and after that it’s up to each individual person.”

To hear the Dalai Lama’s message, kids had to be prepped with background and supported with follow-up. “Just to take the metaphor way too far,” Geist joked, “a seed in the sand is not going to grow. Hopefully the international students will take back what they learned,” Geist said. As for the American students, “It’s really important that teachers don’t let it drop.” It’s going to be up to them to use the message on a personal level.

The next morning, cheerful chatter filled the room as Woo-Adams tried to get her class under control. She rang her bell three times, “I’m going to start class,” she called. “Come on guys, show me some compassion.”