Kindness Matters Everywhere
Dr. Ben Churchill
It’s the Great Kindness Challenge Week, and Carlsbad Unified is abuzz with kind words and thoughtful acts.
The Great Kindness Challenge, presented by Kids For Peace, was started right here in 2011 by Carlsbad parents and students, and is now observed around the world. Seventeen million students – attending 33,000 schools in 110 countries – participated last year, registering 843 million acts of kindness. It’s what the world needs now.
Carlsbad Unified is committed to promoting social-emotional wellness and safe and healthy schools, so every CUSD school has been planning fun and meaningful activities to celebrate The Great Kindness Challenge. Spiritwear days, door decorating, kind messages, and acts of generosity are bringing compassion to the forefront on campus.
One of the founding schools, Hope Elementary, had a rousing line-up of Kindness activities this week:
On Sunday, the Kids For Peace students met at school to decorate the campus with Kindness banners, posters, and sidewalk chalk art.
On Monday, a police officer on his motorcycle led the students to the playground for the Kindness Kick-off. A “virtual assembly,” featuring a video made by the Kids For Peace students, was shown in all classrooms. At recess, students were welcomed with Kindness Stations, where they might “Entertain someone with a happy dance,” “Tell a joke to make someone laugh,” or play Freeze Dance.
On Tuesday, there was a Wishing Well, where students could “Make a wish for a child in another country.” Or they could make a donation to Kind Coins, which is raising money to purchase laptops for students in a remote village in Peru. Tuesday’s virtual assembly included a video about those Peruvian students. (In previous years, Kind Coins built schools in Pakistan and Kenya, a health clinic in Liberia, and, over the last two years, a preschool and friendship center in Tijuana.)
On Wednesday, students wrote a kind note to a teacher–it has been a tough time for teachers–and gave them Kindness kits.
Hope Elementary students will make a video of this week’s Kindness activities, and will trade their video for those made by their partner schools in Shawnee, Kansas, and Pune, India.
The activities across all sixteen school sites support our district’s social and emotional learning goals, helping Carlsbad Unified to build a culture based on respect, inclusion, and kindness.
This year’s Great Kindness Challenge theme – Kindness Matters Everywhere – reminds us that, in these days of stress and anxiety, we already have the tools to support one another on campus and in the community.
As we enjoy Kindness Week, our students are learning that every act of kindness matters, and that every person can truly make a difference and have a powerful impact that extends throughout the world.
In the words of Kids For Peace Co-founder Jill McManigal, ”My word for 2022 is Gratitude. I am grateful to all who believe in the power of kindness, and to all who give our youth the opportunity to practice respect, gratitude, and inclusiveness.”
Now, more than ever, #KindnessMatters.
