HAZLET – Pupils in Hazlet are learning that kindness is a lifelong act.
During the week of Jan. 27, students at Cove Road Elementary School, which educates students in the fifth and sixth grades, participated in daily acts of kindness in accordance with the Great Kindness Challenge.
The Great Kindness Challenge is an international proactive and positive bullying prevention initiative that improves school climate and increases student engagement, according to the challenge’s website.
Beers Street Elementary School, which also educates students in the fifth and sixth grades, also participated in the week-long challenge that aims to inspire engagement and positivity among pupils.
On Jan. 31, school counselor Maggie Walsh, who works at both schools, said pupils were encouraged to share compliments with one another, to engage with new students, and to foster an atmosphere of kindness through a variety of activities.
In 2019, more than 13 million students from 110 countries showed more than 650 million acts of kindness during the Great Kindness Challenge, according to thegreatkindnesschallenge.com
The Great Kindness Challenge checklist offers 50 examples of kind activities that could be used by schools during the kindness week. Walsh said schools may incorporate their own activities for students.
To conclude the week of kindness, the students exchanged compliments with one another. The children wrote encouraging words and positive personality traits, reflective of each student, and taped the compliments to the back of each other’s shirts.
The front of the shirts featured one trait or word the students believe describes themselves.
Students in Katie Mazzucchelli’s fifth grade class at Cove Road Elementary School used class time on Jan. 31 to participate in that activity. Words such as “enthusiastic,” “humorous” and even “effervescent” appeared on the pupils’ shirts.
One student said the activity made her “realize I have friends.”
“It’s really cool because the kids walk around and you see the smiles on their faces and how proud they are of themselves. It’s a super cool idea because you don’t always know what someone else is thinking about you,” Walsh said.
Walsh explained that the children were encouraged to sit with new friends at lunch.
“Students now have a difficult time conversing with each other and starting a conversation. They lack a lot of those social skills,” Walsh said. “Just being able to sit at lunch and trying to get to know somebody helps build those skills.”
Asked why it is important to promote kindness from a young age, Walsh said, “There is a lot of anti-bully (education) going on. Instead of focusing on ‘the problem,’ we like to be preventative. Kindness is a way of doing that. The engagement with students and staff and having them believe in something also changes the culture of our school.”
The Cove Road Elementary School’s mantra this year is “to be the good,” Walsh said, adding that pro-social behaviors, which are behaviors intended to help others, have reduced discipline referrals at the school.
“All research shows that the more you do to promote pro-social behaviors and work on mental health issues (will encourage) students to be more successful in the future,” Walsh said. “… It’s important to remind kids and remind staff that what you are doing now is going to help you with your grades, decrease your stress and things like that.”
