kindness

School resource officer’s new deputy finds purpose on patrol

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Bay Minette, Alabama first-grader Braylon Henson wants to be a police officer when he grows up, thanks to school resource officer Ronald Saladin.

“I noticed his classmates were out there playing and he was in here by himself,” Saladin told WKRG. “I let him come walk with me because he felt left out.”

The 6-year-old was born with a condition known as Ectodernal Dysplasia, which means he was born without sweat glands and cannot go outside when the temperature is above 74 degrees. Teachers know to rub the boy down with ice if he overheats, but his condition means he can’t participate in all of the same activities as his classmates.

“He felt left out, and I didn’t want him to feel left out,” Saladin said. “His mom was afraid he was going to get picked on and bullied when he came to school.”

So Saladin befriended his little partner in August, and the duo have been patrolling the halls of Bay Minette Elementary ever since. Saladin even bought Henson his own mini uniform, complete with handcuffs, hat and badge.

“He would take my stuff but he wanted his own little uniform,” Saladin said.

Henson takes his new responsibility seriously.

“You know what you’re getting, right? A ticket,” Henson told a teacher after he found a pencil on the floor during a recent patrol.

“Hey! I’ll be back,” he warned another classroom.

Teachers told WKRG they’ve noticed Henson’s grades improving since he took on his new role, and it’s obvious his celebrity status on campus boosted his confidence.

“It’s definitely a blessing,” Saladin said, “like it was meant to be.”

The friendship between Saladin and Henson illustrates an important aspect of character education, through both Saladin’s mentorship and Henson’s new-found mission.

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

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

Kenneth Shore, a psychologist, author and chair of a child study team for the Hamilton, New Jersey Public Schools, penned a column for Education World about ways educators can encourage students to engage in school.

“As a teacher, you will have greater success spurring a student to speak up if you can figure out why he is reluctant to participate,” Shore advises. “Whatever the reason for his reticence, your role is not to force him to speak; doing so will more likely make him clam up than open up. Your role is to provide a supportive, encouraging climate that helps him feel more comfortable, more confident, and less fearful of speaking up.”

 

Justice Against Bullying at School uses slime to teach students how to handle bullies

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Students in Kalamazoo, Michigan are fighting bullying, one batch of slime at a time.

About a dozen students from Kalamazoo area schools recently met at the Community Center of New Village Park to mix up their favorite concoction, a monthly reward for good behavior and regular attendance at weekly Justice Against Bullying in Schools (JABS) meetings.

The JABS Slime Club is one of four themed JABS clubs in the area that now draw about 60 students to discussions about how to handle and defuse bullying. The effort – which has expanded to include clubs focused on gardening, dancing and sewing, as well – bloomed from a single club of eight students in 2016 launched by Gwendolyn Hooker, whose granddaughter Justyce was forced to switch schools because of relentless torment.

The regular meetings give students a venue to discuss run-ins with bullies, a game plan for how to react, and an opportunity to bond with their classmates over a shared interest, Second Wave reports.

JABS’ anti-bullying message takes the form of the acronym D.T.T.E.

According to Second Wave:

D: Defend yourself, which might mean covering up or running. T: Tell an adult in charge, such as a teacher or administrator. T: Tell another teacher or administrator, or a parent, grandparent or trusted friend. And E: Express yourself to let your feelings out. D.T.T.E.

“Nobody should violate you personally,” Hooker tells students. “No one should touch you without your permission and make you feel bad. If they do, it’s up to adults to intervene.”

Much of the group’s work centers on restorative justice practices, which aims to bring bullies and their victims together to repair damage caused and to increase the likelihood that offenders will not reoffend. Many kids who bully others, Hooker explains, are often suffering through their own problems at home. Students at the October slime making session concocted blue glittery goo, in honor of National Bullying Prevention Month.

Hooker told the education site she founded JABS because she couldn’t find anti-bullying groups to connect with when her granddaughter was under attack, but the club has since halted the girl’s harassment and brought together numerous community groups to rally around the cause.

“Hooker says that in its two short years, JABS has accrued partnerships from across the city, including KYDNET, the Anti-Bully Squad Partners of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Interfaith Neighborhood Homes Network, Northside Recovery and Resource Center, the Youth Ministry of First Congregationalist Church, Lightning Kicks Martial Arts, Gurlz of Color and the Northside Association for Community Development, just to name a few,” Second Wave reports.

“I had no idea JABS was going to turn into such a needed thing,” Hooker said. “You have to invest in the place you live, work and play. If everyone invested in where they lived, they would profit.”

James Davison Hunter, founder of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia, points to the importance of addressing specifics of a community’s moral ecology to create personalized solutions to bullying that actually work.

“We can only care for the young in their particularity,” Hunter wrote in “The Content of Their Character,” an analysis of character education programs in a wide variety of schools. “If we are not attentive to and understanding of these contexts, we are not caring for real, live human beings, but rather abstractions that actually don’t exist at all.”

The federal website StopBullying.gov offers a wide variety of tools and information for parents, guardians, educators and others to push back against bullies, from laws and policies to training and research resources.

OH students show commitment to kindness to raise funds for school security

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Students in Geneva, Ohio schools are showing off their commitment to kindness for all to see.

Middle and high schools recently pledged to treat everyone with kindness during an event to kickoff a month of kindness awareness programs. The effort, designed by Geneva Parents for School Safety, coincides with National Bullying Prevention Month in October, the Star Beacon reports.

“Kindness is the key to overcoming bullying,” Geneva Parents for School Safety co-director and counselor Marti Milliken Dixon said. “Young people who are kind to each other have far fewer instances of bullying behavior. Teaching a young person kindness is an effective way to improve our society both locally and globally.”

About 100 students tied red and white ribbons on a fence outside of school to show their commitment to treating others with respect and intervening in bullying situations – a display that will greet visitors throughout the month.

“The ribbons blowing in the breeze will be a month-long reminder of their pledge,” Dixon said. “When we empower young people to stand up to the bullies and use positive peer pressure to curb these behaviors, the benefits are palpable. This activity also provides young people with a tangible representation of their good work.”

The kindness pledge event – along with rock painting at elementary schools, compliments day at the middle school, and the creation of a kindness garden at the community library – also serve as fundraisers for Geneva Parents for School Safety to purchase 251 emergency lockdown barriers for every classroom in Geneva Area City Schools, the Star Beacon reports.

“We’re currently at 30 percent of our fundraising goal,” Geneva Parents co-director Margie Netzel said. “Our sponsors have shown they understand the need for safety in our schools and are helping to make it happen.”

Administrators throughout the district spoke up in support of the program, and applauded the focus on rallying the community together around kindness.

“Anything we can do to help kids be sensitive to others and kinder is a positive thing,” Geneva High School Principal Douglas Wetherholt said. “The anti-bullying message is important to us.”

“We want to involve the entire community in this effort,” middle school principal Alex Anderson added.

James Davison Hunter, founder of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture, pointed to the importance of school practices and connections to the community in “The Content of Their Character,” an analysis of character education in a variety of different U.S. schools.

“How a school is organized, the course structure and classroom practices, the relationship between school and outside civic institutions – all these matter in the moral and civic formation of the child,” Hunter wrote.

Parents and educators looking for tips to combat bullying can find a variety of resources from Champions Against Bullying. The group’s “No-Nonsense Guide To Kids’ Bullying Solutions,” for example, teaches students “prevention and intervention strategies, immediate practical solutions and safe and effective ways to help a friend who is being targeted by bullies,” among other topics.

Thrive charter schools’ unique approach is inspiring students, fueling explosive growth

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San Diego’s Thrive charter school network is growing exponentially, from a single location with a class of 45 in 2014 to nearly 700 kids spread across four campuses this school year.

Its rapid expansion comes amid tensions between charter and traditional public schools in the district, but it’s driven by a different kind of educational model that stresses character and a project-based approach to learning that parents can appreciate, according to LA School Report.

“If a hospital were run the way we run schools, it would be like, ‘Welcome to the hospital! It’s MRI day. I know you’ve got a heart murmur, but no problem! We’ll give you a brain scan,” Thrive founder and CEO Nicole Assisi told the education site.

“I feel like that’s how we operate schools: You’ve got a kid with a broken leg, you give him some antibiotics – when in reality, it’s about precision teaching and learning.”

At Thrive campuses – which are adorned with portraits of world leaders and student artwork – each student receives a personal lesson plan to identify strengths and weaknesses, and they work with school counselors to draft a road map to achieve their goals.

Classes are comprised of students in “core groups” based on development, rather than grade levels based strictly by age, and lessons incorporate subjects of math, science, public speaking, character and others into projects that benefit the school, as well as people in the community and beyond.

One recent project, “The Light of Kindness,” involved students engineering, designing and crafting DYI lanterns with LED lights they later donated to Syrian refugees resettled in San Diego. Other projects involved creating their own books, and flying a swarm of drones over their school.

The approach is part of Thrive’s three-part educational model, “which pushes students to learn to learn (using evidence-based instruction to build academic skills), learn to do (developing the skills of collaboration and problem solving through hands-on project), and learn to be (cultivating a sense of citizenship and social action in wider communities),” according to LA School Report.

Olivia told the site the small group setup in her math class has made a major difference in her academics since she transferred to Thrive.

“At my (old) school, we just worked on our own papers. It was just, ‘Here’s the paper, just work alone, stay focused.’ You’d get no help or anything,” she said. “I was behind in math, and my mom thought of Thrive. Here, we work in groups, and our teachers helps us with math. We get to communicate with different people.

“I’ve been getting really good in math, and I’m already getting catched up to third-grade math,” she said.

Other students like Russel discussed how working together to create and complete school projects is building a confidence he’ll need later in life.

“You know how one of the biggest fears in the world is going up and talking to a big crowd of people? That’s what we do on our exhibitions. Parents come up and you have to explain your project,” he said. “And we kind of get used to that, so when we get older, we can just talk about what our new invention is.”

Much of Thrive’s success stems largely from a deep understanding of how students learn, and applying lessons that fit with their strengths and weaknesses.

Sociologist James Davison Hunter, founder of the Institute of Advanced Studies in Culture, noted in his book “The Death of Character” that “psychology is in a position to specify the conditions that permit or impede the full realization of a person’s natural creativity, productivity, and well-being.”

The rapid growth in popularity of Thrive schools makes it clear parents flock to schools that get it right.

The Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues offers resources for parents and educators looking to help youngsters work through their emotions to realize their full potential.

In the Centre’s “Tools of Virtue” lesson, for example, students learn about identifying their emotions, and how they impact decision making in different types of situations.

Las Vegas students focus on kindness, respect on anniversary of deadly shooting

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On the one-year anniversary of a deadly shooting in Las Vegas, students in the Clark County School District are spending the week focused on kindness and respect.

Students at Paul E. Culley Elementary School spent October 1 singing Dianna Ross’ “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” and talking about respect and empathy during an event in the school garden, where officials also released doves in honor of the 58 people killed by a gunman at a downtown music festival last year, KLAS reports.

The effort is part of Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval’s statewide “Week of Respect” from Sept. 28 through Oct. 2 to raise awareness about bullying in schools, and what students can do to stop it.

“It’s important that we’re all calibrated that we’re all sharing the same message that bullying is not ok at any level,” Charles Sebeck, with Clark County School District’s equity and diversity department, told the television station.

Officials are getting that message across through both school activities and a focused social media campaign with local sports starts, student groups, and others that encourages students to “Be an Upstander.”

“We’ve always engaged the community, but this is the first year we’re using social media as a platform to really … customize our message for different stakeholders,” Sebeck said.

The approach seems to be having a strong impact.

“Being kind means showing integrity, showing empathy,” Culley fifth-grader Veronica Giron told KLAS.

“I stand up for other people; for example, when I feel they’re getting bullied or people are teasing them, I stand up and tell them to not do that,” classmate Amy Martin said, adding that she enjoyed helping to hang more than 1,000 folded cranes in the garden as a “symbol of peace.”

“I was helping with the cranes, and I was helping the teacher doing the cranes and putting the beads on,” she said.

Nevada’s Week of Respect is focused on helping students develop a moral compass through practice and positive role models, both components of effective character education.

“(W)e must acquire a moral sensibility – we learn what is right and wrong, good and bad, what is to be taken seriously, ignored, or rejected as abhorrent – and we learn, in moments of uncertainty, how to apply our moral imagination to different circumstances,” sociologist James Davison Hunter, founder of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture, wrote in “The Death of Character.”

“Over time, we acquire a sense of obligation and the discipline to follow them.”

The University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Center for Healthy Minds offers a free mindfulness-based kindness curriculum for parents and educators looking to reach youngsters with deeper messages about character.

“Scientists and experts who worked on this curriculum continue to expand the research, which not only includes efforts to replicate our research findings but also to spread them far and wide,” according to the Healthy Minds website. “For example, we had the unique honor of sharing insights from studying the kindness curriculum with Sesame Street Workshop to help shape their spring 2017 season on ‘kindness.’”

‘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.”

 

Act of kindness during PE class sets off ‘chain reaction’ in NE community

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A single act of spontaneous kindness at Gering Junior High School recently sparked a chain reaction that’s snowballing into something much bigger in the rural Nebraska community.

Seventh-graders in teacher Brenda Pszanka’s physical education class were running a mile in late September when several girls found themselves struggling to complete the last few laps, with one student in particular in tears, the Gering Courier reports.

Several girls who already finished the run noticed their classmate struggling, and began to encourage the girl to press on, eventually returning to the track to help her finish the last two laps, Pszanka said.

“Pretty soon a group of about 10 girls starting running with her,” the teacher said.

Six more in the class joined another four girls struggling to complete the mile, and the inspiration pushed them all across the finish line.

Pszanka said the crying student’s tears quickly turned to a smile “from ear to ear.”

“She had done it,” Pszanka said. “She finished the mile.”

The teacher also wrote about the incident on Facebook.

“Everyone was cheering these five girls on – yelling their names and clapping,” Pszanka posted. “It was definitely a great sight to see. I was smiling from ear to ear – no prompting from me to go help. These seventh-graders found it in their hearts to help out their classmates.”

But it didn’t end there. Pszanka shared the moving experience with students on her eighth-grade volleyball team, and it inspired them to act out their own kind acts, as well.

Each player wrote two encouraging and positive notes and taped them to lockers at school, then expanded the campaign to downtown businesses during a scavenger hunt later in the day, the Courier reports.

“It was pretty cool seeing them do something nice like that for other people,” Pszanka said. “And we’re hoping that it inspires those people to do something nice for someone else – a chain reaction.”

Researchers at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture note that the emerging culture of kindness in many schools is a product of school and community leaders who set a positive example and create habits and traditions rooted in kindness.

In “The Content of Their Character,” a summary of character education in a variety of U.S. high schools, Institute founder James Davison Hunter wrote:

What empathy 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.

Ripple Kindness Project offers a more in-depth look at what drives kindness, and its physical and emotional benefits, with “8 Reasons For Teaching Kindness In School.”

“We need to be prepared to teach kindness, because it can be delayed due to maltreatment early in life. It can be smothered under the weight of poverty, and it can be derailed by victimization later in life,” Rutgers University psychology professor Maurice Elias explained. “Yet despite these and other travails, the receipt of kindness and the ability to show kindness through service are both growth enhancing and soul cleansing.”

“Kindness can be taught, and it is a defining aspect of civilized human life. It belongs in every home, school, neighborhood, and society.”

 

©2017 Advanced Studies in Culture

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