As part of the Intermediate School’s recent Kindness Week work, the school’s “Kindness Ambassadors” visited Elementary School K-2 classrooms and presented kindness lessons to Elementary School students as part of the Great Kindness Challenge (GKC).

This is another great example of creative intra-school cooperation, this time focusing on character education, with older students serving as mentors to younger ones.

Students in the Elementary and Intermediate Schools participated in theme days the week of Jan. 23 to 27 and were encouraged to complete as many kind acts as possible. In classrooms, Kindness Ambassadors presented Rana DiOrio’s “What Does it Mean to Be Kind?”  to  K-2 students, followed by a classroom activity.  It’s the story of the shift that happens when everyone understands — and acts on —- what it means to be kind. The classroom meetings also gave the older students a great opportunity to further refine their planning and presentation skills.

The GKC initiative, presented by Kids for Peace, is a global campaign that promotes kindness in K-12 grades. It’s a positive, action-based bullying-prevention initiative supporting a school culture of kindness, compassion, unity, and respect.

This week gives every educator and student an opportunity to model and focus on kindness practices, part of the ongoing character education and social-emotional learning (SEL) skills that are vital for school, work, and life success.

During the last school year, over 36,000 schools in 110 countries participated in the GKC initiative, which involved 18 million students engaging in over 900 million acts of kindness.

See more photos on the district’s Facebook page.