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Stewart elementary celebrates ‘Kindness Week’
WASHINGTON - Students at Stewart Elementary spent this week performing and recognizing myriad acts of kindness, in the building’s first shot at a soon-to-be tradition administrators called “Kindness Week.”
The week serves as an exercise in positive behavior as schools seek to teach not just reading and writing, but social skills and moral values. Principal Mike Marsden said it was pitched by guidance counseling staff at the building, and was quickly given the go-ahead by administrators.
“This goes hand in hand with what we’ve been talking about, and wanting to get some character-building out to our whole school,” he said. “If we have certain expectations, we need to teach that expectation, and so we felt like we needed to a little bit more character building ... it’s just a way for us to reach the whole student body, and talk to them about what does it mean to be kind, what does it look like.”
Throughout the week, students followed dress-up day themes, performed class-wide acts of kindness, like cleaning one anothers’ rooms while their peers were away, or leaving nice notes on each others’ desks. When pupils witness less coordinated, single acts of kindness, they’re encouraged to make a note of it, and add a link to a paper “kindness chain” representing the week’s theme.
Students also took home challenge forms, listing acts of kindness they could do at home, for parents to sign off on as they were finished. Completed lists can be turned in for a prize at the end of the month.
While that’s perhaps more of a reaction than a selfless act of service would normally receive, Marsden said rewarding young students for good behavior made a substantial impact.
"When it’s reading or math, it’s not just, ‘Let me sit and talk at you the whole time,’ there’s fun activities that you try to mix in there to try to grab their attention. I think the same thing goes for this,“ he said. ”You do some things that are going to draw their attention toward it, so you can expose them to it ... especially at this level, where they’re just learning their social boundaries, and right and wrong, and friendship skills.“
That practice is important.
Guidance Counselor Tracy Almelien, who first pitched the idea, said acts of kindness were akin to “building a muscle” for the behavior.
“The more you do it, the easier it becomes and the more natural it becomes,” she said. “This is a way of introducing everybody to that, building their kindness muscles.”
They can also be fun.
“February tends to be kind of ‘blah,’ and it’s a nice little dopamine rush midway through the bleak winter months,” Almelien said.
The counselor said she hoped Kindness Week would become an annual affair. A T-shirt design contest has already begun to sell merch for the event next year.
As for other positive behaviors, school officials say they’ll dedicate other months to yet-undecided character traits, though the list might include respect, or gratitude. It’s not yet decided whether those months would have a week-long recognition period of their own.
Superintendent Willie Stone said he was enthusiastic about the week as well.
“We’re trying to get our kids excited about doing more good things for people, and just treating people right,” he said.
Comments: Kalen.McCain@southeastiowaunion.com
