Looking For Opportunities to be Kind

When I set out to write about positivity and kindness, I had been trying to think of ways that I could get my students thinking about putting others before themselves. I love that the 12th-grade Learning Strategies class has a year-long project that requires the students to “pay-it-forward” and to complete several random acts of kindness throughout the school year. My goal, sometime this quarter, is to have my English students think of ways they can do this in their own school community in order to tag along with what they are doing in learning strategies. This could even be an opportunity to develop some ideas for how they will approach their acts of kindness for Learning Strategies.

Recently, CBS posted a story on their website that showed how two students decided to give new clothes and shoes to a 9th-grade student, Michael, who had been bullied for wearing the same outfit every day because that is all his family could afford. Students had laughed at him and mocked him for his outfit. However, two students noticed this and gave him clothes out of their own closet to help him fit in better. Although Lawrence has a school uniform and this kind of judgment doesn’t happen as much, students still feel self-conscious about other status symbols. It makes me wonder what we can do to eliminate the alienation that comes with that and what acts of kindness our students can carry out that would make a lasting impact in our community.

We, myself included, must be more conscious of the opportunities presented to us each day to be kind to another person, even with very small gestures. I found this story to be very touching and has re-energized me to create a project in my English classes in which we too look for such opportunities. Stay tuned!

Reading Life
I am currently reading The Good Neighbor, which is a biography of Fred Rogers by Maxwell King and Us Against You by Fredrik Backman, the sequel to Beartown. I am thoroughly enjoying both books so far. I will write reviews when I am finished.

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