Fuller Magnet Elementary School

Kindness Social Action Plan

By: Mandy Thompson, Becca Churchill, Jessika Patel, Eileen Casler, Katherine Lynch, Emily

Barrett, Sarah Morse, and Donald Berrigan

Introduction:

Kindness is an important and essential characteristic for students to nurture throughout

schooling in order for them to become citizens that are beneficial for the communities around

them. Teaching kindness to students is a simple way to begin combating bullying, exclusion, and

gender and race bias. By focusing on reinforcing positive behaviors, rather than focusing on

negative behaviors, such as exclusion, gender and race bias, and bullying. Another reason some

schools choose to teach students about kindness because of the persistence of bullying inside and

outside of the classroom because kindness focuses on actions, rather than identifying bullies and

victims. Teaching students about small acts of kindness has the ability of changing not only one

student, classroom, or grade level, but the whole school and administration.

Teaching kindness to our students is really

important because people are not always kind to

each other and often young students do not know

how to react to cruelty. The simple acts of

kindness in life benefit the givers and increase

cultural competence and teaching how kindness

can go a long way to change someone’s day can

affect the classroom in positive ways . Kindness is

the root of diversity, inclusion, friendship, and

teamwork. It can be difficult to encourage as

policy at all times but it is worth the time and effort as everyone can feel better and education

can progress without halting to change student behavior.

 After noticing that students tend to struggle with being kind to one another. We have

decided to implement kindness jars that will placed throughout the whole school where kids are

able to give and receive compliments and kind comments is a strong method to encourage

kindness and build a stronger sense of school community. Currently, our school uses Gifts cards

to encourage positive student behaviors such as paying attention in class, walking in the hallway,

and performance. However, adding kindness jars allows students to take responsibility and begin

to notice kind actions in others. A kindness jar is a simple way we can contribute to the future of

the classroom and school to promote the betterment of the education facility and its environment.

While contributing to the classroom teaching kindness can help foster cultural competence in

students from a young age which is important for their development because it teaches them to

be accepting, supportive, and kind to people of different races, cultures, ethnicities, and gender.

Implementation Table

Week 1 Week 2 Week 3 Week 4

Jars Placed First Classroom Whole Grade Whole School Faculty and

Staff

Our implementation plan would start with placing one jar in a single classroom for one

week. It is up to the teacher the activity they would want to do to introduce the jar to their

students (we each did our own activities on different topics but the overarching theme was

kindness). The following week jars would be placed in each classroom for a specific grade and

the teachers would continue to do activities focused on being kind and accepting. The third week

jars would be placed in every classroom in the school and the fourth week jars would be placed

in faculty and staff offices. The hope is to continue to fill the jars with complements and kind
acts throughout the rest of the school year, however, faculty and teachers would have to hold

each other accountable for ensuring that students continue to use the jar. Therefore, teachers

should try to take some time each week to highlight one kind act placed in the jar or teach a

lesson centered around kindness.

We will be collaborating with the principal and administration to ensure that we have the

full support of the staff. They could also be very helpful when working to implement this in

every classroom throughout the school to transmit how it is simple but important to the cultural

competence of students. Making sure all the teachers are facilitating the process is also essential

for the implementation to go well in the school as well as furthering the hope that this change

will increase academic success in students. The teachers are really the beginning of sparking the

solidarity of the changes to school policy on kindness and as such they need to be role models.

Implementation will work like a domino effect throughout the staff, faculty, and then the

students.

Students, teachers, and faculty are all constituents that need to be engaged in this social

action plan. We will engage them by introducing the idea of the kindness jar and encourage them

to pass out GIFTS cards to students when they see them showing acts of kindness, specifically

when students show these acts of kindness when they don’t think they are being watched.

Because of this, we would need their support and help to model kindness in the school

community.

One example of people who might resist this would be students who just perform the

actions to get a reward when teachers are around instead of following the school policy of

spreading kindness consistently. Some parents may consider this a waste of time and may not

care about solidarity with the school in their own home. A kindness jar may not elicit a desire to
be compassionate in all students and it will not be 100% effective as an incentive for students to

be kind.

Resources and Outcome:

Some resources that our school already has is GIFTS cards and these are used to reward

students who are displaying good classroom behaviors and outstanding performance. Therefore,

students already know what that means and how to use GIFTS cards. We will be able to use

some resources from the school library to implement our action plan, such as printing posters and

cutting paper into small strips to be written on and placed in the jars. One thing that we will need

to acquire is the large jars for each classroom and offices and note cards for students to use to

write the kind acts that they witness.

A Fuller GIFTS Card from Fuller Elementary

Our desired outcome would be teaching students about kindness and the importance of

showing kindness to one another. Each individual student has the potential to be kind to his/her

classmates in every action. We will teach students thoroughly about making choices in order to

be the best versions of themselves, and that one of these core choices is to be kind to others.

Since we don’t know what is going on in the lives of our classmates, it is important to treat them
with kindness, respect, and compassion each and every day while encouraging others to be the

best versions of themselves as well. We hope that by spreading kindness we will be able to fight

bullying, racism, sexism, and stereotyping and bias that can plaque communities.

Implementation Plan:

1. The first step in implementing this action plan would be to read the books we have provided

in our classroom and spark up discussion in the classroom. The books we all have provided

address different topics such as acceptance of differences, collaboration, teamwork and

sharing and discussing about kindness stems from all of these different topics. This allows

for multiple books to be read within the classroom to relate to our social action plan.

2. After reading the books in the different classes, we will introduce the kindness jar. This jar

will be presented to every class as an incentive to be kind throughout the day. This will be

very easy to implement in this school because they already work hard with their “GIFTS”

cards. Students will want to be kind throughout the day now to not only earn a “GIFTS”

card, but also participate in the kindness jar as well. We will be sure to discuss that being

kind should not be something that is done when a teacher is around and we should be kind

all the time. We will introduce the jar as a way to make choices throughout the day to be

kinder to their classmates.

3. Students will nominate other students for kind acts they think they should be recognized

for...further building on the incentive to be kind ALL OF THE TIME rather than just when

the teacher is around. Students can write comments about how they noticed a friend being

kind during the day, how they were kind to someone, and give compliments to the teachers

or their classmates as well. This discourse increases the cultural competence on the students

and classroom everyday.

4. At the end of each day, the teacher will read out loud the notes that were placed in the

kindness jar, so that the day ends on a positive note. We will also let our classes know that

other classrooms will have kindness jars as well, so they can think about being kind and

writing notes in every classroom during electives and other activities.

Results:

We each began to implement our social action plans by completing a lesson plans within our

individual field placements, through a variety of introduction activities.

Mandy and Becca

After reading the book “Each Kindness” by Jacqueline Woodson to our first grade

students we began to have a discussion about what kindness is. We asked students questions like,

what does it mean to be kind, how can we be kind to someone today, how does it feel to be kind,

and what would happen if we were kind to everyone. After the reading we had students take

turns saying a kind act they had done that day into a bowl of water and watching the ripples of

their kind act go out. We closed the activity by asking students to be aware of the kind acts that

they witness and how they treat others. Next, we would implement a kindness jar and begin to

have students write out what kind acts they witness others do.

Katherine and Emily

After reading the book Nerdy Birdy by Aaron Reynolds, we had our first graders decorate

their own puzzle pieces. The book talked about how being different is awesome and we can still

be friends with each other, even if we are different. They were to decorate their puzzle piece any

way that they liked which was unique to them. After that, we connected each puzzle piece to

make a full, class sized puzzle that wouldn’t complete if one of the pieces were missing. This
showed the students that they are equally important to the classroom. This also was a visual that

showed them that even though they are all different, they can all come together to be a family

and community. We closed the activity by asking the students ways that they could be kind to

their friends. Next, we would implement a kindness jar into the classroom.

Sarah and Donald

We talked to our teacher about a kindness jar. She was familiar with the idea but had

limited experience with actually using one in the classroom. We came to the conclusion that a

kindness jar would be a good step to implement in a classroom, especially when there are

problems with bullying and students not respecting each other. She was very receptive to the idea

as a tool to use to assist in classroom management. It would also have an impact on the culture of

the classroom as everyone would feel rewarded for kindness both given and received. It is simple

but also a powerful way to teach students what the expectations are for their behavior, and also

the rewards of kindness. It is important that expectations be set upon all students to be kind, and

to have discussions with them early and often about their classroom behavior. The kindness jar

is incentive in addition to normal classroom expectations and should not replace the teacher’s

instruction.

Closing:

In order to make sure that kindness jars become permanent resident of Fuller Elementary

it might be necessary to change the incentive behind the kindness jar as the classroom evolves.

This will avoid students from getting in the habit of simply being kind for praises or rewards. It

might be even better to start randomly handing out incentives, that way kids learn that not all

kind acts are rewarded with prizes or praise. It will also take the teachers to encourage students
to show kind behavior all of the time and not just when there is an incentive. As students

continue to learn about kindness they should be exposed to literature, resources, activities,

communication, and behavior exemplifies and helps to grow their critical consciousness and

cultural competency. By keeping the kindness jar a big part of the classroom community it will

never go out of style.