By Heather Lusk
Sit by someone at lunch. Smile. Think before you speak. Be an example.
These inspirations of kindness and dozens more were written by third graders kicking off Kindness Week, May 18 to 22 at Eagle Elementary.
The students covered a bulletin board with notes of these inspirations to make others “feel good inside and out” and encouraged the rest of the student body take a note and be inspired.
“We would like them to realize if they work together they can get a common end goal,” said third grade teacher Marissa Grant, whose class chose to complete this project. “We want them to be good leaders going into fourth grade, to set the tone.”
Grant had asked her students earlier in the year how they could make their community sweeter. This is part of the year-long goal for the school’s student body to find ways to help the community.
The class chose a quote to encompass their attitude for the week: “It’s nice to be important but it’s more important to be nice.”
Several days during Kindness Week, individual classes were invited to the gym for games and a discussion of the right way to react in social situations at school and home. Others created bracelets and cards for children at Riley Hospital for Children at a “Pay it Forward” table.
One of the students in charge of that day’s activities expects that this will help him and his classmates next year.
“I think it’s cool to make people kinder in a fun way,” Burke Hanlon said. “Everyone is having fun from participating in it.”
The week will end with Friendship Friday, as Grant’s class used a computer program to match students to a new friend in their grade level based on interests the students self-entered into a computer.
