Teach Them About Kindness #30GoalsEdu

Goal 22: Teach Them Kindness of The 30 Goals Challenge for Educators! Click the link to find out more about the 30 Goals Challenge for Educators!

“Help your neighbor’s boat across, and lo! your own has reached the shore. ” ~ Hindu Proverb
Today’s goal is inspired by my oldest sister. This year she decided to complete a random act of kindness everyday for 30 days. She started this randomly and anonymously. She didn’t seek any kind of acknowledgement. She also would decide on what she was doing each day, which meant she just made it a goal to be kind everyday. She would do things like pay for a person’s groceries or meal or set-up snacks for the teachers in the lounge.
Unfortunately, the curriculum completely focuses on teaching students facts, data, and knowledge. The curriculum doesn’t leave room to show students how to be kind or teach them about citizenship. Kids are in schools for a majority of their days and lives and for most of their development. During their development, they are supposed to learn their place in society and how to interact with others. Is it not important schools teach the whole child? I believe we have that burden.
For goal 22, I would like to encourage you to teach your students about kindness. Teach them how in small ways every day they can be kind by either smiling at someone, opening doors, helping someone with a heavy load, and so forth. Here are a few ideas on how to teach kindness:

• Make an advent calendar in which everyday you suggest a small way for your students to be kind. Here’s an online Acts of Kindness advent calendar that emails you each day a suggestion or you can base yours off of the 2011 version.
• Using the 2011 Acts of Kindness advent calendar, have your students create their own individual calendars. They can either come up with their own ideas or use some from this calendar. If the students come up with these ideas they are more likely to complete the acts.
• Make it a week challenge and have them journal about it or post their deeds on a sticky wall like Wallwisher or LinoIt
• Show them any of these videos of kids performing acts of kindness and have them brainstorm ways they can be kind to others
• As a class, take a trip to visit a nursing home, help the homeless, or perform some other charitable act
• Read to them a story about kindness and have them reflect on memories when someone was kind to them or when they witnessed kind acts. They can share these stories on Voicethread or make digital stories with Storybird, Zooburst, Fotobabble, or Little Bird Tales
• If you teach older kids, have them draw names of younger kids and pair up with them to teach them something new, read them books, or play games with them

Other Resources

Short-term– Have your students participate in at least one activity where they learn about kindness. You can use any of the suggestions or lesson ideas listed or come up with your own activities. Please feel free to share your ideas with us in the comments section below!
Long-term– Try finding ways to teach citizenship in your curriculum regularly.

Important News

• Lisa Dabbs and I have decided to change the hashtag to #30GoalsEdu
• We are focusing on 1 to 2 goals a week.
• Check out my Pinterests for other posts with this goal or ask me to add yours!
• We are collecting all goals in this LiveBinder to make it easier to follow.

Challenge:

Teach your students about kindess.

Did you reflect on this goal? Please leave a comment that you accomplished this goal by either posting your own video reflection on Youtube, using the hashtag #30GoalsEdu, posting on the 30 Goals Facebook group, adding a post to the GooglePlus page, or adding a comment below!

Be inspired with these Inspirational songs, videos, quotes, and more on my Pinterest board, Inspiration for World Changers!

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