Words of Inspiration

One of the ways we focus on everyday kindness is discovering ways to lift up others, making them smile, changing their perspective. As teachers, we do this in simple ways. We greet our students at the door by name. We share a shout-out of praise for a job well done. We make a point to acknowledge ways our students are nice to others and how they help in the classroom.

Our students have the same power to impact others! One way they can let their kindness shine is by sharing their positivity through posters. During our winter party, students worked with parent volunteers to create colorful, personalized posters of kindness after brainstorming and researching quotes online.

When we returned to school in January, we brainstormed locations around the school we could hang our posters to have the greatest impact. We came up with so many places!

Students worked in small groups to add tape to their posters and hang them around the school. From the cafeteria to hallways to water fountains, we sprinkled inspiration of kindness everywhere!

HEF Celebration Gala

In December, Mrs. Cross and I were honored by the Hanover Education Foundation for our grant project, "A Passion for Kindness." This annual event spotlights the different grant projects funded for the upcoming year as well as recognizing each school's Teacher of the Year and the district's Teacher of the Year. It was humbling to share this evening with so many teachers from Mechanicsville Elementary, many of whom had also received funding for their creative projects!

Brainstorming RAKs

After learning about our random act of kindness project, students were very excited to move forward in the process. The next time we were together, we talked about acts of kindness we had completed on our calendar, then separated into small groups to start our project brainstorming lists.

The students came up with so many ideas! They were very excited to hang their lists in the hallway as a reminder of all the different ways people can show kindness to one another.

When we return to school in January, we will start working independently to develop our projects with the goal of completing them in February and sharing with the world in the spring!

December RAKs

To encourage our students to share kindness throughout the month of December, we created a Kindness Calendar for them to complete. Each day listed a different act of kindness. The students were excited to cut these out and glue them into their kindness journals and we enjoyed reflecting on what they had done during our weekly lessons!

Part of our joy as educators is seeing students take what we are learning in school and applying it to the world around them. As you can see from the Facebook message below, our students went above and beyond by making placemats as part of a math activity which benefitted homeless guests staying at a local church. One student volunteered her time with Mrs. Cross to help during their stay and unbeknownst to them both, they wore the exact same shirt!

Our students are taking initiative to shine in kindness, bringing more good in the world! What a delight to so many!

Telling the Students

To jumpstart the month of December, read the book Kindness Counts by Brian Smith. This story chronicles a young boy's experience with random acts of kindness and how his feelings about kindness changed the more he saw and participated in kind acts around him.

For many of our students, this was the first time they had heard the phrase random acts of kindness. How was this different than just being nice? Why was it important to do intentional and random acts of kindness? These questions sparked conversation between students as we delved deeper into this mindset of being kind to others.

Due to a fire drill, our lesson was cut short, but we had just enough time to unveil our main project: Each student would receive a $10 bill to cover the costs of doing a random act of kindness for someone else!

Oh, if you could have only seen their shocked faces and squeals of disbelief!

"Wait... what?"

 "Did she just say..."

 "You mean REAL money?!"

Mrs. Cross and I delightfully replied, "YES!" We explained that the Hanover Education Foundation had awarded us with funding so all the students in our class could create projects of kindness, then share what they had done. The children were SO excited; they couldn't wait to get started!

We sent a formal letter home to parents explaining our purpose, including a space at the bottom for photo permissions as we share our projects in person and online. Less than two weeks later, we had 100% parental support of our project! JOY! We look forward to seeing our students shine with their creative kindness!