To promote inclusion and proactively prevent bullying, students at RH Dana Elementary School participated in the Great Kindness Challenge from Jan. 23-27.
The elementary school students joined more than 18 million kids from more than 36,000 schools engaging in various kind acts such as writing letters to first responders, cheering up someone having a bad day, and eating lunch with someone new.
The Great Kindness Challenge launched 12 years ago with three schools in Carlsbad, California. The Challenge provides schools with a checklist of 50 kind acts that students can do, with this year’s theme being “Grow Kindness.”
RH Dana Elementary Counselor and Homeless Liaison Jennifer Fischer explained that this was the second year RH Dana participated in the Great Kindness Challenge, but the first involving student participation through the new Peer Assistant Leadership committee (PAL).
Starting in the 2022-23 school year, the PAL committee comprises fourth- and fifth-grade students to serve as “kindness ambassadors.” The PAL students help plan activities and dress-up days for events like Red Ribbon Week, Fischer explained.
“They’re not quite (Associated Student Body), they’re not student government; we don’t have presidents or anything,” Fischer said, adding: “But they’re just really kind-hearted students that if they see somebody having a rough day, they’d be the first ones to go over and say, ‘Hey, how can I help?’ or tell them a joke or do something to make them laugh.”
Together, PAL students and staff worked together to come up with different activities such as “highlighting ‘kind words matter,’ sitting next to somebody new at lunch; just tiny acts of kindness that add up,” Fischer said.
As part of the Challenge week, the PAL students also threw a dance that included students from the Exceptional Needs Facility across campus.
“They decided that it would be fun to do an inclusion dance and invite the students from the other side of campus that will be merging with us, from the Exceptional Needs Facility,” Fischer said.
Students prepared for the dance by creating posters and decorating. Then, for half an hour, the fourth- and fifth-grade students danced with kids from the Exceptional Needs Facility.
The inclusion dance got many of the elementary school students excited for when the two campuses merge again next year.
“They were already thinking of ideas and activities to be more inclusive, which I think is great,” Fischer said.
In the next school year, the RH Dana Exceptional Needs Facility campus will join with the RH Dana Elementary School campus. Fischer added that with the merger, she expects students to learn that “people look different and think different, but you can still find a commonality.”
At the end of the week, Fischer had students reflect on what stood out to them, and what made a difference to them that week more than any other week.
“They really thought it was super easy to be kind, and they didn’t realize what a difference it made until somebody did something kind for them,” Fischer said. “That was like, bingo! That’s what we want; we want empathy. We want (the kids) to feel like we’re all in this together, because we are.”
Fischer’s goal for the week was for every student to “actively create a culture of compassion, inclusion, unity and respect at school and beyond.”
She said she feels as if students will carry the message of kindness with them throughout the rest of the school year.
“In fact, the kids that participated in the dance asked, ‘What else can we do with (the exceptional needs students)?’ ” Fischer said.
“Students, children in general, just think of themselves first usually, and how things apply to them,” Fischer continued. “This gives them ideas of what they could do to just think outside of themselves, smile, make happy faces all around in sidewalk chalk.”
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