When Hambright Elementary School staff members were brainstorming ideas to break up the winter doldrums, they found inspiration from a popular book and television series that focuses on kindness. The school designated February 2020 as Kindness Month, inspired by "The Kindness Diaries" book and Netflix series about a retired stockbroker who crosses the globe by relying on the kindness of strangers.
Student writing prompts throughout the month focused on the subject of kindness, school announcements included daily kindness tips, and the school's sign language club created a video to teach signs about kindness to the entire school. Teachers handed out "kindness snippets" to students who were kind to others so they could stick them on a "road to kindness" poster in the school cafeteria, and classrooms competed in a kindness-themed door-decorating contest.
In addition, students in a fifth-grade class became "undercover kindness agents." They made cards for every student in the school - more than 600 - and placed them on the students' desks when they were out of their classrooms.
Kindness Month ended with a schoolwide assembly and the awarding of prizes for the best-decorated doors. The winning door, created by students in Lorien Gilbert's fifth-grade class, includes a quote by Amelia Earhart, which says, "A single act of kindness throws out roots in all directions, and the roots spring up and make new trees."
Hambright assistant principal Melissa Mealy said the kindness initiative was eye-opening. "Sometimes, with the hustle and bustle of daily operations in a school, it's easy to forget the small acts of kindness that take place around us every day," she said. "Doing a kindness initiative simply sheds light and made us more aware of the great things happening here and of how kind students are to one another."
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