Creating Community

Kieran's challenge for us this month was to look for ways to make our school a better place.  We started out by researching Random Acts of Kindness websites.  This led to a number of class, home and whole school projects for our students throughout the months of November and December.



The Class

How can we be nicer to each other?  How can we make someone's day?  Sometimes a simple compliment can make someone's day.  We tapes a paper of everyone's back.  Students were instructed to write something nice on everyone's paper.  Before I let them look at the papers, we talked about how it made them feel.  The best answer?  One student said it made him feel good writing so many positive things. Insert melted heart here.  When I finally let them look at their papers, some of them couldn't stop smiling.  Many Instagram profiles were updated with those papers that day.

We also decided to crate a Kindness Calendar.  Students shared their ideas of kind deeds that could be done in the school and we posted them on my door.  From that list, they had many options of what they could do to make our school a better place.  Each day. students take out their calendars.  Once they complete a good deed for the day, they put their calendars away.  Every Friday, they take their calendars home to spread the kindness to their outside of school lives.  I'm even making them take these home for Christmas break!

The School

One of the things our students found in their research was the 12-12 challenge.  on December 12, we challenged all students in the school to give 12 compliments to 12 different people in our school. It was an awesome experience.  Students talked about how it made them feel when they said something nice.....it was really better to give them receive.

We also did a sticky note challenge.  All the grade 6 students got 5 sticky notes.  They had a job to go out into the school and put positive notes on lockers and doors.  The activity even made the morning announcements.

Being able to focus on creating a positive community in our school was such an empowering focus for us.  Students realized that even small acts can make a big difference to the environment around us.