Minisink Valley Intermediate School students were honored for their artistic creativeness by being named winners of the school’s recent kindness poster contest.
The poster contest was one of many activities undertaken at the school during the week-long Great Kindness Challenge, held the last week of January.
Because of its participation, the school has now been designated “Kindness Certified School” by organizers of The Great Kindness Challenge (GKC).
A free, powerful, week-long program, the Great Kindness Challenge is a PreK-12 initiative 
that seeks to positively transforms school culture through kindness. The program is spreading kindness at an impressive scale: There were 15 million students in 28,062 schools and 115 countries were part of the 2020 Great Kindness Challenge.
Poster winners are:
- 1st Place: Third-grader Caitlin McIlroy, a student in Dede DeAngelis’ class
- 2nd Place: Fifth-graders Adrianna Rivieccio, Nyla Harris and Dempsey Depuy, students in Rosemary Marcolina’s class
- 3rd Place: Fifth-grader Trinity Capo, a student in Jennifer Carroll’s class
- 4th Place: Fifth-graders Isabella Agboola and Zoey Wagner, students in Mike Sirico’s class
During that week, intermediate school students were given “the challenges” checklist which has 50 kind acts students can complete. Students were given stickers and kids who participated in the poster contest received a “kindness matters” pencil.
The school’s kindness ambassadors read morning announcements, which included kindness quotes, helped with recess activities and went into the elementary school’s classrooms to read a book about kindness and do an activity with students.
Students also contributed cut-out hand prints to the school’s Kindness Tree, located outside the principal’s office, and where the “No Place for Hate “pledge is also located.
See more photos on the district’s Facebook page.