compassion

‘Start With Hello’: Sandy Hook Promise teaches kids to connect with kindness

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Students across America are learning to relate to their classmates on a more personal level, including those with whom they traditionally wouldn’t associate.

Students at Tuslaw Elementary and Middle schools in Stark County, Ohio, spent a week in early October wearing name tags, writing positive notes for others, and eating lunch with kids they’d normally avoid, IndeOnline reports.

The theme was simple: Start With Hello.

“This week is allowing our students to realize they are not alone,” counselor Chelsy Jackson said. “They have people they can reach out to whether it’s their peers or teachers.”

The activities are part of the Fourth Annual Start With Hello Call-To-Action Week organized by Sandy Hook Promise, a national nonprofit that “trains students and adults to know the signs of gun violence so that no other parent experiences the senseless, horrific loss of their child.”

The organization was founded by family of the 26 students and staff of Sandy Hook Elementary who were murdered by a gunman on December 14, 2012.

“The Sandy Hook Promise wants to get students connected and make sure they are not feeling alone,” Jackson said.

Stark County schools, including Tuslaw, Fairless and Perry school districts, joined more than 12,000 schools across the country taking part in 2018. Down the road from Tuslaw, Fairless Middle School students held discussions about isolation, and brainstormed ways to reach out. They also donned name tags and dressed up as their favorite characters throughout the week to help spark conversations, according to the news site.

“It raised a lot of awareness,” Fairless counselor LuAnne Frase said. “It got our students thinking and mingling with other students and out of their comfort group.”

And it’s clear the positive messages are sinking in.

“People care about you, someone cares,” Taylin Saunders, a Tuslaw eighth-grader, said of lessons learned.

“You get to know a lot of people that you might have judged (before),” seventh-grader Logan Hornberger added. “People judge me as being weak but if they got to know me they would find that I can do more than they think.”

The efforts to instill more kindness and compassion in students comports with findings from the Institute of Advanced Studies in Culture’s “Culture of American Families” report, which documented parents’ explicit commitment to moral character.

“The overwhelming majority of American parents (96 percent) say ‘strong moral character’ is very important, if not essential to their child’s future,” according to the publication.

The nonprofit Kindness.org offers a lot of ideas for educators and others to promote kindness, both themselves and in others. The site lists dozens of initiatives readers can join to make a difference, from “Tag someone to tell them ‘I’m here for you,’” to “Pay it forward with coffee,” to “compliment a stranger,” among many others.

Buddy Bench helps students put kindness into action at VA elementary school

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The buddy bench at Jackson-Via Elementary School in Charlottesville, Virginia is catching on.

School counselor Kristin Ullrich helped to bring the bench to one of the school’s playgrounds several years ago to provide a way for students to practice empathy, and it seems to be working, the Daily Progress reports.

“If the students are at recess and they’re sad and they feel like they need a friend, they can sit on the bench and the other students will go and include them,” Ullrich said. “It really allows them to learn practiced empathy and make new friends.”

The news site points to research from the International Electronic Journal of Elementary Education that shows buddy benches can help promote positive behaviors at school, particularly for students who struggle with their emotions and behaviors.

“The goal of the buddy bench is to change school climate by structuring part of recess to cue students to interact with and befriend students who might otherwise spend recess alone,” according to the Journal.

Jackson-Via third-grader Charlotte Dontanville said she used the bench to gain friends in kindergarten and now has many, as well as a motivation to reach out to others.

“If two people are being mean to each other, then nothing good will happen to either of them,” she said. “You want to make new friends, see what other people’s personalities are like – it’s good for you.”

The buddy bench at Jackson-Via is bright red, decorated with smiling faces, a rabbit and a beaming sun, designed to draw attention. But it’s not the only way the school is empowering students to step up to help their classmates.

The Bully Nots program designates “kindness leaders” who are tasked with teaching and demonstrating positive behaviors to younger students, through an assembly, songs and choreography.

One of this year’s leaders, Eva Reed, said she’s excited to join the Bully Nots, which combines her passions around an important message.

“I want to express myself and be kind to others and make a lot of new friends,” she said.

Both the buddy bench and the Bully Nots stem from the school’s intentional focus on the true meaning of kindness.

James Davison Hunter, founder of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture, wrote in his book “The Tragedy of Moral Education in America”:

It is easy to affirm a general idea of kindness, but quite another to believe that people are intrinsically worth being treated kindly, and that because of that belief, one has an obligation to actually treat them kindly.

Action for Happiness, “a movement of people committed to building a happier and more caring society,” offers suggestions to help educators create Kindness Projects in the classroom.

“Every Kindness Project starts with doing: using creative activities to explore, promote and experience caring and compassionate behavior,” according to ActionforHappiness.org. “It’s important that children learn by doing, not just by talking or thinking about kindness. This helps their ideas become real and tangible; and with repetition, it helps them to start forming new habits.”

TX teacher’s coffee cart helps special needs students build social skills

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A first-year special education teacher in Texas is getting a lot of attention for a creative idea she came up with to help students overcome their disabilities and to help them learn communication and other life skills.

Recent Texas A&M graduate Shelby Winder took a portion of her modest starting salary to buy a coffee cart for special education students in her Life Skills class at Grand Oaks High School in Spring, Texas. The idea is to allow students to run a coffee bar as a small business, which they dubbed “The Grizzly Bean,” while helping students strengthen communication and social skills, Rare reports.

Texas author and life coach Chris Field posted about Winder’s efforts on Facebook.

The coffee cart “would allow her students to walk around to each of the teachers and staff in the school and take their orders and then deliver their coffee to them on Fridays. Most importantly, this would allow the students to practice their social skills, communication, working through their shyness, and even learning how to run a simple business by calculating their expenses and profits,” Field wrote, adding that he was so impressed he helped repay the teacher for her expenses.

“Her students have now been at this a couple weeks … and she says they are absolutely loving it,” he wrote. “It’s obviously a great teaching tool and one that will give them skills and lessons to carry far beyond this school year.”

The practical life skills of counting and collecting cash are only part of a bigger message Winder is hoping to convey, according to Field.

“One of the coolest parts of this story is that Shelby has the goal of using some of the profits from her class’s coffee business to actually provide funds for another school to start the same project,” he wrote. “Then they would do the same, and they would do the same, and so on and so forth. How cool is that?!”

Winder planted a seed that’s growing into something bigger, both through new habits of communication and socialization for students and new school traditions motivated by compassion and understanding for students with special needs. Those habits and traditions are critical to effective character education.

“What empathy we feel may help us understand someone else’s needs, and even feel the desire to help that person,” James Davison Hunter, founder of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture wrote in “The Tragedy of Moral Education.” “But without embedded habits and moral traditions, empathy does not tell us what to do, nor when nor how.”

The Ripple Kindness Project outlines many of the ways students benefit from a focus on practicing kindness in “8 Reasons For Teaching Kindness In School.”

Patty O’Grady, an expert in neuroscience, explained that “Children and adolescents do not learn kindness by only thinking about it and talking about it.

“Kindness is best learned by feeling it so that they can reproduce it,” O’Grady said. “Kindness is an emotion that students feel and empathy is a strength that they share.”

Study shows kindness activates brain differently when nothing expected in return

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A new study of brain activity shows genuine acts of kindness activate the reward network in the brain in a unique way when there’s nothing expected in return.

University of Sussex researchers examined 36 existing studies featuring brain scans of 1,150 people making kind decisions and divided the images into two groups: those with subjects acting out genuine altruism with nothing expected in return, and those motivated by strategic kindness, or something to be gained, The Week reports.

Researchers found both types of kind acts sparked activity in the brain’s reward center, though it was more obvious in participants acting out of strategic kindness.

But they also discovered something else.

“Some brain regions (in the ‘subgunual anterior cingulate cortex’) were more active during altruistic generosity indicating that there is something unique about being altruistic with no hope of gaining something in return,” according to the site.

The study’s lead author, Daniel Campbell-Meiklejohn, contends the analysis “sparks questions about people having different motivations to give to others; clear self-interest versus the warm glow of altruism.”

“The decision to share resources is a cornerstone of any cooperative society. We know that people can choose to be kind because they like feeling like they are a ‘good person,’ but also that people can choose to be kind when they think there might be something ‘in it’ for them such as a returned favor or improved reputation,” he wrote, according to PsychCentral.

“Some people might say that ‘why’ we give does not matter, as long as we do,” Campbell-Meikeljohn continued. “However, what motivates us to be kind is both fascinating and important. If, for example, governments can understand why people might give when there’s nothing in it for them, then they can understand how to encourage people to volunteer, donate to charity or support others in their community.”

The study is the latest evidence supporting truly altruistic kindness as an important component of character.

Sociologist James Davison Hunter, founder of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture, wrote in his book “The Death of Character”:

Implicit in the world ‘character’ is a story. It is a story about living for a purpose that is greater than the self.

Campbell-Meiklejohn contends that while strategic kindness may prompt more obvious activity in the brain, there’s times when it’s no substitute for the real deal.

“For example, if after a long day of helping a friend move house, they hand you a fiver, you could end up feeling undervalued and less likely to help again,” he wrote. “A hung and kind words however might spark a warm glow and make you feel appreciated.”

The Ripple Kindness Project explains why that “warm glow” is important to conveying true kindness to students with “8 Reasons for Teaching Kindness in School.”

In the article, neuroscience expert Patty O’Grady contends “kindness changes the brain by the experience of kindness.”

“Children and adolescents do not learn kindness by only thinking about it and talking about it,” she said. “Kindness is best learned by feeling it so that they can reproduce it. Kindness is an emotion that students feel and empathy is a strength that they share.”

 

Wichita schools creates peer group for male minority students where ‘it’s cool be smart’

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The Wichita, Kansas school district is working to give its young male minority students a strong BAASE to set them up for success in college and life.

BAASE – an acronym for Better Academics and Social Excellence – is a new program aimed at rewarding black and Latino boys in the city’s 16 middle schools who are thriving in class and encouraging them to pursue bigger things, The Wichita Eagle reports.

More than 500 seventh- and eighth-graders – all with a GPA of 3.2 or better, excellent attendance and good behavior last school year – recently gathered at the district’s headquarters to eat pizza and watch an inspirational video, “Dare to Dream,” featuring icons like Martin Luther King Jr., Michael Jordan, Misty Copeland, and others, according to the news site.

“They’ve already demonstrated that they have the ability to go to college,” said William Polite, Wichita’s director of diversity. “Our goal is to bring them all together to create a positive peer group where it’s cool to be smart and it’s fun to be smart.”

The district’s executive director of secondary schools, Robert Garner, addressed the boys at the event, where he explained that a high school diploma is “the bare minimum” and encouraged students to enroll in Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate courses.

“You are the kinds of students that we believe can be leaders,” he said. “You’re the ones that are going to make a difference in the world.”

“Our goal is that each of you will graduate and go further,” Garner said. “We’re trying to build you up – build your resume to the level where, when you graduate from high school, you will walk out the door and be ready for that college opportunity.”

The first meeting focused mostly on setting goals. The invited students also signed their name to a pledge “to enter into a brotherhood of a higher level by holding ourselves and each other accountable to the highest standard of achievement both academically and socially.”

Future meetings will include guest speakers, practice interviews, college visits and other activities focused on building the character.

“Polite said advisers at each middle school will use a free curriculum called ‘Believing the College Dream’ to guide conversations about the importance of education,” the Eagle reports. “They’ll also practice social and emotional skills and talk about important character traits such as honesty, persistence and self control.”

The Wichita district’s focus on helping students develop social emotional intelligence underscores the reality that schools are formative institutions, with a mission that extends far beyond academics.

James Davison Hunter and Ryan S. Olson, with the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture, write in “The Content of Their Character”:

Human beings, after all are not merely cerebral, but sentient; not merely rational, but feeling – and beyond the intellectual and emotional, they are social and normative beings, too.

The Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues offers resources to develop educators develop emotional intelligence and positive character virtues in students. By connecting emotions, choices, and actions, the Jubilee Centre materials push students beyond skills and toward the virtue of compassion for others.

Student patriotism at ID elementary goes viral, highlights influence of school employees

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When Idaho mother Amanda Reallan arrived at Hayden Meadows Elementary to pick up her kids after school one day last month, what she witnessed compelled her to take a photo and post it online.

Before long, the picture went viral, prompting near universal applause from across the internet.

The picture showed three fifth graders struggling to keep the American flag from touching the ground as they retrieved it for the day, with one of the boys literally lying on the ground to prevent it from touching, KREM reports.

“We’ve had a bunch of close calls,” according to Jack LeBreck, who laid his body on the line to protect Old Glory. “But I thought it would happen because it was kind of a windy day. So I just thought of laying down … and seeing what would happen.”

The boys, all Cub Scouts, were selected for the task by school custodian Mac McCarty, a 20-year veteran in the U.S. Air Force who taught them everything they know about flag etiquette.

“It was all because of our custodian, Mr. Mac,” LeBreck said.

“What they did yesterday was obviously all of them … laying on the ground and all that,” McCarty said. “And I’m very proud.”

The inspiring photo was shared more than 2,000 times in just the one day following the patriotic act. The students, amazed by the online reaction, said the flag duty is an honor they don’t take lightly.

“It’s really a great privilege,” said Casey Dolan, who was also in the photo with classmate Nalan Tuttle. “I feel really lucky I was chosen for it.”

Reallan told KREM she was “overwhelmed with pride” when she came across the boys last month, and she’s glad to see the positive attention it’s focused on the community.

“They did themselves proud, they did their families proud, they did their school proud, and I am very proud of them,” McCarty said.

The students’ initiative to protect the flag is a timely reminder of the nature of morality.

James Davison Hunter, founder of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture, wrote in “The Tragedy of Moral Education in America”:

Morality is a vision of moral good shared by a community; the attitudes, aspirations, sensibilities, and dispositions that define its highest aspiration for itself, and how those moral goods find expression in every situation in daily life.

McCarty is a prime example of how school employees, as well as educators, have the power to not only positively influence students, but also many others in the community and beyond.

The Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues has a very interesting article, Living Within Reason, that outlines the thinking of Thomas Aquinas on cardinal virtues that lead to a good and just life.

Teachers and principals working to strengthen students’ character could ways to incorporate the pursuit of these virtues as part of the daily experience of students.

AL students mount campaign against child clothing manufacturer over conditions for garment workers

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Students for Fair Labor at the University of Alabama believe garment workers in El Salvador are being exploited by apparel manufacturers, so they’re pressuring university officials to do something about it.

“Our overall goal is to make multinational companies accountable to the people that they exploit who work on university campuses, in our communities and in the overseas factories where collegiate apparel is produced,” the group’s leader, Amber Chan, told The Crimson White student newspaper.

Chan explained that the University of Alabama licenses its logo to a Miami, Florida-based company called Vive La Fete, which manufacturers children’s clothes at factories in El Salvador. The company doesn’t sell clothes at the school, but does sell clothes with the university logo online.

Students for Fair Labor contends women embroidery workers are treated poorly by Vive La Fete, and the group has demanded the company pay them $1.2 million in back pay, pension, vacation days, health benefits and allow the women to form a union. Students contend the women are grossly overworked and underpaid.

The group also pressured the Student Government Association to call on the University to put Vive La Fete “on notice” by reiterating SFL’s demands to the company, according to the news site.

SFL students delivered the letter from the student government to President Stuart Bell’s office in late September and promised campus activism would “escalate in various ways” if the University fails to act on the group’s demands, Chan said.

Convincing the University to end its licensing agreement with Vive La Fete is the SFL’s ultimate goal.

“We’re just trying to keep The University of Alabama accountable for the kinds of businesses that they deal with,” said junior SFL member Rivers Jackson. “And then also just seeing that human beings are treated equally and fairly, specifically workers, and make sure their human rights are met.”

University officials have not yet responded to the students’ requests, which follow a long line of similar activism on college campuses that dates back decades.

And regardless of whether folks agree with the effort, the tradition can have a significant impact on students because “it is through experience that students participate in moral community and practice moral action,” according to James Davison Hunter, founder of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture.

In his book, “The Death of Character,” Hunter wrote, “Experience is always a precursor to the possession of character and practical wisdom.”

The Alpha Omega Academy, a Christian online academy, provides “Ways to Grow Student Involvement in Community Service” to help parents and educators get student engaged in volunteer and service work.

“Often volunteering is a reflection of a strong emotional connection to a cause that’s personally affected an individual,” the guide advises. “Find what your student is passionate about first; without a driving focus, his enthusiasm to help will quickly fade.”

“The deeper your student feels the need, the more likely he will act to better the world around him,” according to the site.

CO schools refocus on drug use, bullying after ‘school snapshot’ survey

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A recent “School Snapshot” survey showed students in Colorado’s Summit School District struggle with bullying and substance abuse at a higher rate than the state average, and administrators aren’t taking the news lightly.

Results from the Healthy Kids Colorado Survey showed 55.2 percent of students at Summit Middle School reported being bullied, just over 11 percent higher than the statewide average, while 20.8 percent of high-schoolers said the same, compared to 18.1 percent statewide, the Summit Daily reports.

High school students also used alcohol, vaporizer or e-cigarettes, marijuana and regular cigarettes at higher rates than students statewide.

“We take these results seriously, and we don’t want to see our kids taking illegal substances, alcohol or marijuana underage,” Julie McCluskie, spokeswoman for the district, told the Summit Daily.

McCluskie said the district is already taking a variety of steps to address the issues, such as including bullying in its “Second Step” social and emotional curriculum, new school counselors and social workers, and an anonymous Safe2Tell reporting system, which provides an avenue for students with concerns about suicide, bullying, violence or drugs.

“Over the last five years we’ve seen a rise in the number of students who express stress, anxiety and depression,” McCluskie said. “There’s also been an increase in students threatening self-harm and suicide. That’s been the focus for us the last few years. Our numbers are lower than state averages, but it’s always concerning if kids have those feelings. And we’re going to do everything we can to make sure no child feels lost, alone or does anything to harm themselves.”

The survey provided some hints that the efforts are making an impact.

The percentages of students who felt sad or helpless for two weeks in a row or more, and those who considered or attempted suicide are all below the statewide average. The survey also revealed 89 percent of the Summit middle school students, and 87 percent of high school students, said they had someone to talk to when they felt helpless, the Summit Daily reports.

“The school district takes our responsibility to keep kids safe and healthy very seriously, but we can’t do it alone,” said McCluskie. “When our parents are engaging not only with the school work, but also being supportive of social and emotional challenges the kids are facing, those kids will be more successful and safe…there are concerns for us in this data. What’s important now is that we respond to that as a school district and as a community. Nothing is more important.”

Summit administrators are already establishing new practices through curriculum, staffing, and methods of communicating with students that will compel action and change.

Sociologist James Davison Hunter, founder of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia, wrote in his book “The Tragedy of Moral Education in America”:

What we feel may help us understand someone else’s needs, and even feel the desire to help that person. But without embedded habits and moral traditions, empathy does not tell us what to do, nor when, nor how.

The National Institute on Drug Abuse offers a broader look at teen drug use with the 2017 “Monitoring the Future Survey: High School and Youth Trends.”

The survey of eighth, 10th and 12th grade students in hundreds of schools across the country shows “past-year use of illicit drugs other than marijuana holding steady at the lowest levels in over two decades.”

 

Landmark Harvard study reveals six things that contribute to long, healthy lives

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A Harvard Medical School study that tracked 800 people through their entire lives recently revealed six things that made the biggest impact on their happiness, health and longevity.

The study involves several types of participants, from Harvard graduates born around 1920 to blue collar, inner city adults and intellectually gifted women specifically. And while many of the findings seem like common sense, others were less obvious, Business Insider reports.

Smoking and excessive alcohol use showed to have the biggest impact on health, while exercise and and weight management played key roles in longevity and happiness. Heavy smokers generally died sooner than others, while those with a healthy weight who enjoyed regular exercise lived longer with a better quality of life.

Years of education also made a difference. The study found “the physical health of the 70-year-old inner city man was as poor as that of the Harvard men at 80. But remarkably, the health of the college-educated inner city men at 70 was as good as that of the Harvard men at 70,” according to “Aging Well: Surprising Guideposts to a Happier Life from the Landmark Study of Adult Development,” a book by George Vaillant, the lead author of the study for over three decades.

“This was in spite of the fact that their childhood social class, their tested IQ, their income, and the prestige of their colleges and jobs were markedly inferior to those of the Harvard men. Parity of education alone was enough to produce parity in physical health,” Vaillant wrote.

He found that having a happy childhood is important, as well.

“For both inner city men and the Harvard men the best predictor of a high income was not their parents’ social class but whether their mother had made them feel loved,” according to Vaillant. “Perhaps the best summary statement is, What goes right in childhood predicts the future far better than what goes wrong.”

Relationships, and the emotional intelligence to deal with others, showed to be other big predictors of happiness later in life.

“The lives of all three cohorts repeatedly demonstrated that it was social aptitude — sometimes called emotional intelligence — not intellectual brilliance or parental social class that leads to a well-adapted old age,” Vaillant wrote.

The final two elements predicting a long and happy life involve coping skills, and generativity.

Those in the study who used “maladaptive coping” – blaming others, being passive-aggressive, living in denial or fantasy – did not fare as well as those who used “mature methods” like altruism, sublimation, suppression and humor, Business Insider reports.

Generativity – giving back through service as a consultant, mentor, coach or other youth leader – also benefitted participants later in life.

“In all three study cohorts mastery of Generativity tripled the chances that the decade of the 70s would for these men and women be a time of joy and not of despair,” Vaillant wrote.

He summarized the overarching message from the study – the longest prospective study of its kind in the world – with a single sentence: “Whether we live to a vigorous old age lies not so much in our stars or our genes as in ourselves.”

The findings underscore the notion that personal character is perhaps the most significant determining factor for quality and longevity on earth, a realization that some schools are taking to heart.

Daniel Scoggin explained to CultureFeed why character development is critical to the Great Hearts charter school network he founded in Arizona and Texas:

As the ancient Athenian statesman Pericles described the virtues of a free democracy and its citizens as, “. . . knowing the secret of happiness to be freedom, and the secret of freedom a brave heart.”

In the spirit of Pericles we named our public charter organization Great Hearts. It is a reminder to us of our heritage of freedom. But it also is a reminder to us of what we want our students to have, and who we want our students to be, as we inspire our students to fulfill their calling and prepare for the adventure ahead.

The Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues at the University of Birmingham offers a teacher handbook to help educators develop students’ character and improve their outlook on life. The handbook provides activities that encourage youngsters to “cultivate a sense of appreciation for the network of people from whom they receive benefits,” and “to reflect on the meaning of gratitude” outlined in an associated workbook.

ID teen helps lead first Community Kindness Day to promote ‘simple acts of kindness’

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Skyview High School senior Tyson Cantrell believes “simple acts of kindness can change the world.”

It’s the motivation that compelled his work helping to coordinate the first Community Kindness Day at the Ford Idaho Center last month.

“It’s easy to focus on the negative, but I know that everyone can use random acts of kindness,” he said.

Cantrell played a key role in recruiting students from area high schools to participate in the school kindness week activities and the Community Kindness Day, an effort that revolved around lifting others up. For Skyview’s Kindness Week, for example, senior mentors wrote letters of encouragement to freshmen, the Idaho Press reports.

“The feedback has been phenomenal,” Cantrell said. “We need to let them know that it is OK to be vulnerable because we are here for them, to support and guide them.”

Parents like Kelly Gibbons, who serves on Vallivue High School’s planning committee, told the news site working with Cantrell and other student leaders on the Community Kindness Day was an inspiring experience.

“My interactions with Tyson and other Canyon County leadership students was incredibly encouraging and respectful,” she said. “These youngsters are truly on the pulse of important social issues and are not afraid to take a stand. Our future is in some capable, caring and kind hands.”

Cantrel said he intends to continue the kindness campaign throughout the school year, and is now focused on the important question “How can we carry this past the one week and talk about it again?”

The push to instill more kindness in students and school comports with findings from the Institute of Advanced Studies in Culture’s “Culture of American Families” report, which documented parents’ explicit commitment to moral character.

According to the publication:

The overwhelming majority of American parents (96 percent) say ‘strong moral character’ is very important, if not essential to their child’s future.

The Community Kindness Day and school kindness weeks in Idaho are among a variety of different approaches schools across the country are using to bring more compassion into the classroom and school life in general.

Earlier this year, more than 10 million students in nearly 20,000 schools in 100 countries took part in “The Great Kindness Challenge,” for example.

The campaign targets one week per year – next scheduled for January 28- February 1, 2019 – and encourages students to complete as many kindness challenges as possible, with different challenges for different grade levels.

Students with the Junior Edition Checklist, those in PreK through second grade, can invite a friend to play, help someone up if they fall down, or entertain someone with a happy dance, while the Great Kindness Checklist for students in second through 12th grade includes things like offering help to the school custodian, learning to say “Hello” in a different language, or sitting with a new group of students at lunch.

“All kids deserve to learn in a safe, supportive and caring environment,” according to The Great Kindness Challenge website. “The Great Kindness Challenge provides a powerful tool that actively engages students, teachers, administrators, families, and communities in creating a culture of compassion, acceptance, unity, and respect.”

©2017 Advanced Studies in Culture

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