During the 2024-2025  school year, Slinger High School Social Studies students collaborated with the community to research a Civic Group, Volunteer Group, and Running Group theme along with any other examples of community development that students chose to focus on.  The objective was to better understand how community is built and sustained in the Slinger area: Past, and Present.  Students used interview, observation, survey, and secondary sources to collect data.  As ideas emerged from staff, students, and community members, we paid particular note to the 5K Kiwanis Heads Up theme and a community book read about mental health and the value it seemed for both adults and youth in finding a sense of belonging.  The importance of building bonds and bridges was observed. With several cross country runners in fall semester social science classes, there were some natural ties to running clubs.  One of our committee members suggested "Keeping the Community  Running" and we "ran" with the title. As we studied a representative sample of civic group bonds, we also saw that running groups helped form bonds.   Thank you to the many current and retired Civic leaders, workers, volunteers, group and organization leaders, community members, historians, grandparents, alumni, teachers, students, and administrators who helped teach Social Science students more about our theme as well as several key community groups that helped us understand community changes, social space changes, and land changes.   NOTE: We could not get to all Civic Groups and Volunteer Groups unfortunately, but were able to build a foundation that can be added to in the future. Special thanks to Kara Johnson for website design, Dean Leisgang (CESA 8) for his help with video work, and the Washington County Community Foundation for support.