Secret Kindness Agents: An Educator's Guide E-Book

Ferial Pearson

• Herausgeber: WriteLife Publishing
• Kategorie: Für Kinder und Jugendliche
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Beschreibung

This is the book that teachers, school counselors, school psychologists, and school administrators have been looking for.

With the current political climate, frequency of school shootings, and rising concern for students' mental health, schools are desperate for ideas on how to teach students to be kind.

In this book, educators can find guidance on how different education professionals have implemented The Secret Kindness Agents Project, having tweaked it for their unique contexts, from preschool through university levels.

Administrators and other school professionals will also find research outlining how The Secret Kindness Agents project impacted twenty-three edeucators, their students, and their contexts, as well as research that underscores the need for kindness education in general.

The Secret Kindness Agents project has been implemented in over 500 schools around the world; from preschool through university level; in public, private, and homeschool settings; and in rural, urban, and suburban settings. It is all over the United States, three provinces in Canada, in Cameroon, Kenya, Australia, Fiji, and the Philippines.

The project has been highlighted by Teaching Tolerance Magazine, the Hallmark Channel, and Lady Gaga's Born This Way Foundation and is the focus of the author's TEDX Talk and her first book, The Secret Kindness Agents: How Small Acts of Kindness Really Can Change the World.

Leseprobe

Secret Kindness Agents – An Educator’s Guide

© 2020 Ferial Pearson. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, digital, photocopying, or recording, except for the inclusion in a review, without permission in writing from the publisher.

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The information and recommendations in this book are presented in good faith and for informational purposes only. Every effort has been made to ensure the materials presented are accurate and current. All information is supplied on the condition that the reader or any other person receiving this information will perform their own due diligence and make their own determination as to its suitability for any purpose prior to the use of this information. The purpose of this material is to educate.

Published in the United States by WriteLife Publishing (An imprint of Boutique of Quality Books Publishing Company) www.writelife.com

Printed in the United States of America

978-1-60808-240-7 (p)

978-1-60808-241-4 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2020944166

Book formatting: Robin Krauss, www.bookformatters.com

Cover artwork: Kristy Stark Knapp

Editor: Caleb Guard

PRAISE FOR SECRET KINDNESS AGENTS: AN EDUCATOR’S GUIDE

“Secret Kindness Agents: An Educator’s Guide is an excellent way to learn about the project and why every educator should implement Secret Kindness Agents. The positive impact of SKA is clearly stated and Dr. Pearson makes the research clear and accessible. [Reading] the stories of numerous implementers solidifies the benefits, provides real life applications, and gives numerous ideas for how to make SKA work effectively in a variety of settings with diverse students.

I’ve seen SKA in action and with this book the word can spread further, and more children and youth will benefit from a program that strengthens their social and emotional well being. The focus on inclusivity has so much potential to heal the racial divides and biases that exist in our schools. In a world that needs more kindness, this book shows us a simple way to effectively build positive relations among all our students.

The book provides inspiration and, if anyone reads it and doesn’t implement Secret Kindness Agents, I will be shocked.”

— Lisa Kelly-Vance, PhD; Professor, University of Nebraska Omaha; Past President, National Association of School Psychologists

DEDICATION

This book is dedicated to the Original Secret Kindness Agents, and to the Agents who have written their stories here. They taught me that there is always hope for humanity and for the future, and that true kindness in its profound simplicity is truly transformational for everyone involved.

Much love, Mama Beast.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I am and will forever be grateful to my advisor, Dr. Kay Keiser, for her unwavering support of my work with the Secret Kindness Agents project and ultimately for suggesting that it be the focus of my dissertation. She gave me the confidence in the project’s merit and in my ability to see it as a legitimate study. In addition, I am so thankful to have such a phenomenal supportive group of professors—and personal role models—in my dissertation committee; Dr. Janice Garnett, Dr. Jeanne Surface, and especially Dr. Sandra Rodriguez, who gave a tremendous amount of support, help, and encouragement. I am also indebted to all of my professors in the Educational Leadership Program at the University of Nebraska at Omaha for everything that I have learned in their classes, all of which have enriched my study and my life in general, and in particular, to Dr. Peter Smith for planting the seed about my ability to be successful at doctoral study, and for exemplifying kindness in leadership and education from the first class I took from him a decade ago.

I have the privilege of being surrounded by the best colleagues and friends in the world. Dr. Sarah Edwards has been telling me for many years that I could do this, and always encouraged me to recognize and handle the juggle that is life as a mother, teacher, student, leader, and community activist, and she is always pushing me to find self-care and to protect my time. She has also been supportive of my work in kindness from the beginning and worked through her own grief to help me. I could never have done any of this without her constant advice and guidance. Dr. Melissa Caste Brede took the time to talk with me about my research design and is always sending me books that I might like; she is always so thoughtful and is a gifted listener, as is Dr. Debra Wisnewski. Dr. Anne Karabon sent me resources about phenomenology. Dr. Abby Burke, Dr. Cindy Copich, Dr. Kelly Gomez Johnson, Dr. Amanda Steiner, and Dr. Chris Wilcoxen all led the way and provided me with the inspiration to finish. I could list all of my colleagues in the Teacher Education Department, but instead I can say that they all have shown me support and encouragement in their own ways.

As an immigrant whose family is scattered around the world far away from me, I am so grateful to have a found family; you know who you are! Thank you for always checking in, for your unconditional love and unwavering support, for talking me out of the impostor syndrome, for talking me down through the hard times, and for providing me with laughs, jokes, and videos of laughing babies to cheer me up.

None of this would have happened without the original Secret Kindness Agents who bore with my harebrained schemes, called me on my mistakes, taught me about true kindness, gave me back my hope, lifted my morale, and created a project that is changing lives in far-flung places every single day. I must also thank Jennifer Hensel, who taught me that we must imagine what the most horrific situations are in order to be moved to change, and who gave me permission to take her daughter Avielle in my heart throughout the original Secret Kindness Project journey, from the first days, to the first book, to the TEDx Talk, to the dissertation, to this book. I hope we are changing things in a way that honors your family.

I am also extremely grateful to the people who took the time to complete my questionnaire for my dissertation and especially those who agreed to write their stories for this book. They are, by their very nature, some of the kindest people in the world, and I am excited to continue my relationship with them on this kindness education journey.

Most importantly, I must acknowledge my family, especially my grandparents and parents, who modeled kindness and social justice for me and my sisters; who sacrificed so much so that we would be able to pursue our dreams of higher education, something they were never able to pursue themselves; and who always gave us unconditional support in our goals and aspirations. Without them, I never would have believed in myself enough to go this far. To my children, Ilahi and Iman, thank you for always being understanding about me being in class on so many nights, for talking me through my thesis, for sitting and doing homework with me, for making me tea and giving me hugs when I felt overwhelmed, for doing extra chores so that I could study and write, and for teaching me that I can learn kindness from even (and especially) the youngest people in my life. Finally, to my soulmate and partner in life, Danny, I could never, ever, have done any of this without you. Thank you for always believing in me, even when I didn’t believe in myself, for saying yes to all my ideas even when it meant more work for you, for being my sounding board and safe space, and for your unconditional love, always.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

Introduction

PART 1

Introduction to Part 1

The Experiences of Students, Schools, and Educators

Literature on Social Emotional Learning and Character Education

The Secret Kindness Agents Project Study

PART 2

Practical Advice

The Tiniest Secret Kindness Agents

Grades 1-6 Secret Kindness Agents

Grades 7-9 Secret Kindness Agents

Secret Kindness Agents in High Schools

Scecret Kindness Agents Do the College Thing

References

Update on Secret Kindness Agents

About the Author

Other Books by Ferial Pearson

INTRODUCTION

On December 12, 2014, six-year-old Avielle Richman was murdered at Sandy Hook Elementary School along with 19 other kindergarteners. Avielle’s death hit me hard because she reminded me of my own daughter—the same age and curious eyes, loving nature, kind heart, bouncing brown curls, singing disposition, and friendly spirit. Over the past 18 years, I have taught thousands of students and I will admit, there are a small few whom I have truly feared. They would put their hands in their backpacks and I would think, “This is it. Today we die.” Luckily, that never happened, but I realized that while I had grown used to feeling afraid for myself and my students, other teachers and their students, I was not used to the thought that next time it could be my children.

Like many mothers, after Sandy Hook I had a difficult conversation with my own children, who asked why someone would murder kindergarteners. Like any other teacher without a good answer, I turned the question back to them. My then-nine-year-old son said that whenever he was bullied in school, he would get angry and feel like lashing out, but then someone would be kind to him, and the feeling would go away enough that he could let it go.

My daughter then asked, “What if people had always been kind to the shooter every single day? Maybe he wouldn’t have done it.” Naïve as it may have been, when I returned to school, my daughter’s comment led me to devise a plan to change the culture of the school where I was teaching into a more compassionate one; I could not change what happened in Sandy Hook, and I have no control over what happens in Syria or elsewhere in the world, but perhaps I could prevent violence from happening in my immediate surroundings. My idea was that I would give envelopes to my high school juniors assigning them specific acts of kindness in exchange for a prize. At my students’ suggestion we agreed that we ALL had to draw an assignment every week, including me, and the students emphasized that in order for it to be true kindness, it had to be done without expectation of thanks or rewards. We brainstormed a list of random acts of kindness that could happen at school and that didn’t cost any money. My students acknowledged the risk it took to perform these random acts—they didn’t want to stick out from their peers—so we gave each other Secret Agent Names and kept the acts anonymous. We became Mama Beast and the Secret Kindness Agents.

Every week, we had a ceremony where I would play some cheesy song while each Agent came up to draw an assignment. We wrote an oath, acknowledged the risks we were taking, and at the end of the week we would reflect on what happened, how we felt before, and how we felt after we had completed our assignments. Perhaps it comes as no surprise that I not only saw the culture of our school change into a more positive and compassionate one, but I also saw the change within my students. Teens who I knew had considered suicide more than once held their heads higher and grew excited at how they could make another person feel good. They grew in self-confidence, self-esteem, and self-efficacy.

When I came across the Cherokee fable, A Tale of Two Wolves (Native American Legends), on the First Nations Website, I brought it to class. I asked my students if they had ever been bullied and every hand in the room went up. I then asked if anyone had been the bully and again, every hand went up, perhaps a little less eagerly. We realized that the concept of there being “good” or “bad” people in the world is a myth.

As the grandfather says in the myth, both wolves dwell within us. Through the Secret Kindness Agents project, our good wolves were gaining on our evil wolves; our kind acts were the food for not only our good wolves, but also for the good wolves of the recipients of our kindness. With time now spent acknowledging the bad wolf and feeding the good wolves, I found that when a student reached into their bag, rather than a gun, I expected a poem, a card, or some other random act of kindness. My students no longer thought about people —or even themselves—as either good or bad; they recognized the complexities of what it means to be a human being, and that we are all capable of and responsible for which wolves we feed in ourselves and in others.

The project concluded in May of 2013 because I was leaving to teach at the University. However, the students wanted to keep the project going, so we started a Facebook page on which we could continue to post assignments, quotes about kindness, stories that highlighted kind acts around the world, and celebrations about what we were continuing to do. Together with the students, I also wrote a book entitled Secret kindness agents: How small acts of kindness really can change the world (Pearson, 2014) as a sort of “how to do what we did” project, and in the fall of 2014 I gave a TEDx Talk about what we had done. As a result of these three resources, I have been asked to speak with thousands of students and hundreds of teachers, in person and via online software, throughout the United States and even in Canada, about how to implement the project.

Almost every week, I hear of more educators who have used the Secret Kindness Agents project in a different part of the continent. According to my personal records, the project exists in over 450 classrooms, from preschool through university, throughout the United States. It has also taken hold globally in three provinces in Canada, as well as across the globe in Spain, Australia, Cameroon, Kenya, Fiji, and The Philippines. The list seems to be growing almost weekly! Each teacher tweaks the project to suit their own contexts and students, but the core of their projects remains the same as when my students and I originally did it; they are all spreading acts of kindness secretly, and with no expectation of a reward or gesture of appreciation.

The hallmark tenets of Secret Kindness Agents Project are the following four characteristics:

1. Youth and adults together decide on random acts of kindness that can be performed within the community whose culture they are trying to improve.

2. Youth and adults perform these acts of kindness routinely and anonymously.

3. Youth and adults consistently reflect either orally or in written form about their experiences in completing their kindness assignments.

4. Youth and adults choose Secret Kindness Agent names for themselves and/or each other in order to maintain anonymity.

The Study

With more and more educators adopting the Secret Kindness Agents project, I began to wonder whether the educators perceived the same positive impacts in themselves, their students, and their contexts as I did when we first implemented it. I had informal, anecdotal stories about how the educators felt about the project and how it affected the people and the environment around them. One of the most powerful stories was from a fellow classmate in the Educational Leadership program who told me about how she implemented the project with a handful of her students who struggled with behavior issues at a local elementary school. She had a third grader who was angry all the time, and who often lashed out verbally and physically. This young student’s mother was dying of cancer, and the student was angry and felt like she had no control over what was happening at home, so she sought control at school in negative ways. My classmate told her about the Secret Kindness Agents project, and the young student became Agent G-Baby Believe. My classmate recounted to me how, when the student began acting out, she would call her by her Agent name, and her demeanor would completely change right away; she was calling on her kind self, letting her know that she still saw the good in her, even when she was making bad decisions. I saw the same changes in some of my Original Secret Kindness Agents, and so I was motivated to see if these and other changes were common in the other students who had become Agents as well.

While my motivation to do the project was to create positive changes in my students and my context, I also noticed a change in myself while doing this project, which was a surprise to me; I became more aware of kindness around me and began to give more people the benefit of the doubt, including my students. I found myself intentionally performing more acts of kindness. My morale as a teacher increased exponentially, and I felt more hopeful about the future as a teacher, mother, and even as a member of the school and community.

Finally, I perceived positive impacts on my professional context, as well as in the adults who were a part of it. The adults, like me, seemed to become more kind, aware, and compassionate, even when it came to dealing with the most difficult students in the class. The culture of the classroom became that of a family, of belonging, of love and acceptance, and it truly became a place to which every one of us, adults and students alike, looked forward to going.

My study sought to explore whether the same or similar impacts on students, self, and context were observed by other educators who have implemented the Secret Kindness Agents project. As I embarked upon the dissertation journey, I read dozens of articles outlining the research that has been done on the effects of kindness education. I learned about the ways in which kindness has (and hasn’t) been taught at various levels of schooling, and finally, I uncovered what impacts the Secret Kindness Agents project actually has had in the lives of 23 educators and their students. This book is the culmination of the project, the journey, the dissertation, and the relationships that I have had the honor of building with some very special adults who work with children every day.

The Purpose of This Book

As of the printing of this book, and in addition to at least a dozen local news stories and various states and provinces, the Secret Kindness Agents project has been featured at:

1. Lady Gaga’s Born This Way Foundation (https://bornthisway.foundation/secret-kindness-agent/)

2. Hallmark (Karolyn Roby’s students at Skinner Magnet School in Omaha, NE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hzsnS4PzEI)

3. Southern Poverty Law Center’s Teaching Tolerance Magazine (Erin Mangahis’ students at Henry Senior High in San Diego, CA https://www.tolerance.org/.../fall-.../secret-agents-of-kindness)

4. TEDx Omaha (My Original SKAs in Ralston, NE) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVnoHV_Id9k)

As news continues to spread about the Secret Kindness Agents project, I have more and more messages streaming in from parents, foster parents, grandparents, guardians, homeschoolers, educators, school psychologists, school counselors, principals, and super-intendents about how they should start the project where they are. As I present at conferences and deliver keynote addresses about the project, I am constantly asked where education professionals can find details on how to do the project. Since I have only taught high school in one area of the country, I don’t have the expertise to give everyone the information that they need, and I have found myself frantically racking my brain to think of SKA teachers or counselors with whom to connect people who need help. In addition, teachers sometimes ask for my research to show their administrators the importance of kindness education so that they know it’s not a waste of time or resources. This book is my response to those requests. First, it gives the details of my own research on the Secret Kindness Agents project, including the literature that has been written about kindness and kindness education. Then, it provides you with chapters from education professionals and a wonderful Girl Scout about how they have customized the project to fit the needs of their own unique students and contexts. They are teachers, school counselors, school psychologists, and even graduate students. My hope is that you can flip to the part of the book that is most useful to you, whether it’s to find ideas for your own school, to provide evidence and research when writing a grant or getting administrators on board, or simply to improve your own practice. Mobilize, Agents!

PART ONE

The first part of this book is comprised of the literature behind kindness education in general, followed by some excerpts of my dissertation which explored the perceptions of 23 educators who implemented the Secret Kindness Agents project and how they believe the Project impacted them, their students, and their contexts. The research shows the necessity and impact of kindness education and, in particular, the Secret Kindness Agents project. The second part of the book is full of practical advice for those who would like examples of how the Secret Kindness Agents project has manifested in different contexts.

The Literature

Introduction: Experiences of Students, Schools, and Educators

An increasingly troubling paradigm shift continues to narrow the purpose of a public education in the United States toward a primarily economic function of preparing students for the workforce (Mehta, 2013). When we look at the purpose of education in such a narrow way, we are missing the opportunity to ensure that our students are reflective citizens who are capable of understanding who they are in relationship to others, particularly those who are from different backgrounds than themselves (Nieto, 1994). This is not a new issue, as progressive educators have worked to expand democratic education beyond the idea of “efficiency” for more than a hundred years in the United States.

But if democracy has a moral and ideal meaning, it is that a social return be demanded from all, and that opportunity for development of distinctive capacities be afforded to all. The separation of the two aims in education is fatal to democracy; the adoption of the narrower meaning of efficiency deprives it of its essential justification (Dewey, 1916, p. 281).

The corporate-driven creation and adoption of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), have been described as “technical specifications being confused with, but applied to, human learning capabilities” (Tienken & Orlich, 2013, p.44). The CCSS place a high value on the development of workplace skills and so they serve as a powerful bridge between the technocratic logic of policymakers and actual classroom practice (Mehta, 2013). This misguided intersection of paradigm, policy, and practice creates a disturbing scenario in which:

Our children have become akin to new products some “edu-corporation wants to research and develop before bringing to market. Not surprisingly, the product reflects exactly what big business values in its workers – emphasis on analysis, argument, and specialization – at the potential expense of beauty, empathy, personal reflection, and humanity.” (Endacott & Goering, 2014, p. 90)

It is crucial to ensure that the purpose of education in our schools is broad and inclusive so that our students are not just productive workers, but also kind, empathetic, socially and emotionally intelligent human beings. While there is this idea that students are products for corporations, there is also a movement within the teaching world to fight for keeping character education in our schools, for preventing the burgeoning crisis of bullying and school violence through Social Emotional Learning (SEL), and for understanding the link between kindness and overall academic and social achievement in children and youth.

Conceptual Map

While recent research suggests that school-based kindness education programs may benefit the learning and social-emotional development of youth and may improve school climate and school safety outcomes, it is difficult to assess how and to what extent kindness education programming influences positive outcomes in schools in the absence of a conceptual model for studying their effectiveness. In partnership with Kind Campus, a widely adopted school-based kindness education program that uses a bottom-up program framework, researchers Deanna Kaplan, Madaleine deBlois, Violeta Dominguez, and Michele Walsh at the University of Arizona used Concept Mapping as their methodology to develop a conceptual model for evaluating school-based kindness education programs. Their model used the input of 123 middle school students and approximately 150 educators, school professionals, and academic scholars (Kaplan et. al., 2016).

This model proposes that kindness education programs yield both student-level and school-level impacts in large part through making the idea of kindness prominent, which suggests that effective kindness education programs would offer a common language for school students and staff alike to talk about kindness and its positive impacts, as well as provide a framework that encourages members of the school community to acknowledge acts of kindness happening around them and to practice kindness towards themselves and others. The researchers write that this would lead to a more positive school climate for students and a positive work environment for adults, while also supporting the development of students’ social-emotional skills. In addition, they assert that the effects of improved school climate and student social-emotional skills may positively impact school operations such as achievement, disciplinary, and health outcomes, as well as positively impact students’ families and the local community.

As there are many variables that affect schools’ ecology at different levels—individual students, educators, the classroom, the school overall, the families, and the surrounding community—the effects and impacts of school improvement programs can be incredibly complex, and this includes kindness education. Each of these variables interact and influence one another all the time, so the Conceptual Map developed by Kaplan et. al. is an effective way to understand the impact of kindness education programs such as the Secret Kindness Agents project.

The model first looks at school climate, including the work environment as perceived by adults on school campus, and students’ social-emotional skills as related to social-emotional knowledge and student dispositions. Second, the model suggests two additional outcomes of kindness educational programming that would be useful to evaluate in more longitudinal designs: improvements in school operational outcomes, and impacts on school families and the surrounding community. Third, the model looks at “Kindness Focus” (originally named “Intentionality and Awareness” by their participants), which emerged in the conceptual model as unique and distinctive from the more established domains of school climate and social-emotional skills. This cluster looks at the appearance of an increased focus on kindness throughout the school community and an increased awareness of the nuances of kindness and its positive impacts. The researchers believe that this is a likely mechanism through which kindness education programs create change in schools, and report that participants rated the statements in the “Kindness Focus” cluster as the most feasible results of kindness education programs. Therefore, they assert that measuring change in this area seems crucial for assessing the extent and success of program implementation and whether such programming adds something above and beyond programming that directly influences school climate and student social-emotional skills. Finally, the “Family/Community Outcomes” cluster reinforced the value of thinking about schools as a vital component of their greater community. Integrated strategies that improve physical and social environments within schools and neighborhoods have been found to promote optimal child health and well being, especially among children living in high-poverty neighborhoods (Komro, Flay, Biglan, & Promise Neighborhoods Research Consortium, 2011). In addition, community involvement and family support also positively impact students’ academic performance, and children who struggle academically experience particular gains from family and community engagement (Henderson & Mapp, 2002). Therefore, Kaplan et. al. suggest that kindness education program developers consider who school-based programming could be designed with integrative strategies in mind, and that researchers include family and community outcomes that are relevant to the program, for example a kindness focus at home and family engagement in the school. The modules in this Conceptual Map (in the figure on the next page) provide a guideline for the literature that I outline here.

Figure 1

Kindness Education Program Conceptual Map: Processes and outcomes of kindness education programming.

Kindness and Empathy

Compassion is defined as “the feeling that arises in witnessing another’s suffering and that motivates a subsequent desire to help” (Goetz, Keltner, & Simon- Thomas, 2010, p. 352). Therefore, although compassion is a related construct, compassion-based interventions may be different from kindness-based interventions, which usually aim to increase prosocial, kind behaviors even in the absence of witnessing suffering. Being kind requires putting beliefs and values into action, and in addition to kindness being recognized as a value in most cultures and religions around the globe, it is also an observable behavior that teachers can model, see, promote, and reinforce; they just need a reminder to intentionally and explicitly teach what kindness looks like, sounds like, and feels like to both the giver and receiver. Eisenberg (1986) defined kindness as “voluntary, intentional behaviors that benefit another and are not motivated by external factors such as rewards or punishments” (p. 63). Others see kindness more simply as “doing favors and good deeds for others” (Seligman et al,, 2005, p. 412). Kindness appears throughout philosophy, religion, and literature as a value that has historically been important to human beings across the globe.

Aristotle defines kindness as “helpfulness toward someone in need, not in return for anything, nor for the advantage of the helper himself, but for that of the person helped” (Book II - chapter 7: “Aristotle’s rhetoric,” n.d.). Philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche argued that kindness and love are the “most curative herbs and agents in human intercourse” (Nietzsche, Hollingdale, & Schacht, 1996). In the Bible, kindness is considered to be one of the seven virtues, specifically, the one of the Seven Contrary Virtues (direct opposites of the seven deadly sins) that is the direct opposite to envy. It is also listed as one of the Christian Fruits of the Spirit by Paul of Tarsus in his Letter to Galatians 5:22, “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Against such things there is no law” (Society & NIV, 1999). The Fourteenth Dalai Lama wrote a book entitled Kindness, Clarity, and Insight and wrote that his religion is kindness (Lama, Gyatso, Hopkins, XIV, & Bstan-‘dzin-rgya-mtsho, 2002). There are two hundred verses about compassionate living in the Muslim holy book, the Quran (Pickthall, English, & Urdu, 1986). Chesed is a Hebrew word that is commonly translated as “loving-kindness,” “kindness,” or “love” and is central to Jewish ethics and Jewish theology (Orlinsky, Sarna, & Society, 1992). Kindness appears in every theology across the globe and also in literature across the centuries. It has been suggested that most of Shakespeare’s work could be considered a study of human kindness (Lenker, 2001). The Tirukkural, an ancient Indian work on ethics and morality, dedicates an entire chapter on kindness (Translated from Tamil by P.S. Sundaram Valluvar, 1990). It follows that since kindness has existed as a central philosophy and virtue in human consciousness from the beginning of the written word in most of our documented societies, civilizations, and faiths, that it would be important to teachers, parents, and students as well. Maurice Elias, Professor at Rutgers University Psychology Department says:

As a citizen, grandparent, father, and professional, it is clear to me that the mission of schools must include teaching kindness. Without it, communities, families, schools, and classrooms become places of incivility where lasting learning is unlikely to take place . . . [W]e need to be prepared to teach kindness, because it can be delayed due to maltreatment early in life. It can be smothered under the weight of poverty, and it can be derailed by victimization later in life . . . Kindness can be taught, and it is a defining aspect of civilized human life. It belongs in every home, school, neighborhood, and society. (Elias 2012)

Religion, philosophy, and literature make it clear that there are benefits of kindness for those who are the recipients of acts of kindness. However, there are also recent studies that show the multiple benefits to students who are being kind.

Two Penn State Harrisburg faculty researchers argue that adolescent bullying and youth violence can be confronted in America through in-school programs that integrate “kindness – the antithesis of victimization.” They note that national and local legislation and intense awareness efforts have sought to stem bullying, and they point to recent research that suggests a broader perspective is needed to reverse a loss of empathy in society. Their solution is based on reading, discussing, and acting upon the attributes of kindness, which “enables us to be our best selves” (Clark & Marinak, 2010). Berkeley researchers Pinger and Flook argue that the school environment can be very stressful; in addition to any issues they bring from home, many students struggle to make friends and perform well in class. Being excluded, ignored, or teased is very painful for a young child, and it could be impactful to teach kindness, empathy, and compassion. For example, when other children are suffering, students understand how they might be feeling because they have felt similar pain. Kindness bridges those gaps and helps build a sense of connection among the students, teachers, and even parents. Learning to strengthen their attention and regulate their emotions are foundational skills that could benefit kids in school and throughout their whole lives. In addition, having classrooms full of mindful, kind kids completely changes the school environment. “Teaching kindness is a way to bubble up widespread transformation that doesn’t require big policy changes or extensive administrative involvement” (Pinger & Flook, 2016).

When we think about teaching kindness to children and youth, we must be explicit in defining kindness together with the students. In the Secret Kindness Agents project, the students were given a directive to list three acts of kindness each that did not cost any money and that could be done within the school grounds. The students had no problems coming up with their acts of kindness, which suggests that young people already know what kindness is with a little prompting, and writing it down brings it to the forefront of their consciousness. In a Canadian study that investigated perceptions of kindness in 112 young children (ages 5-8) in three schools, students were asked to draw what kindness looks like to them and to draw an example of something kind they had seen done recently at schools. The findings from the prevalent themes in the drawings indicated that students perceived kindness within the context of dyadic relationships, the recipients of kindness were familiar to them, and kind acts were typically found outside; helping physically, maintaining friendships, including people who were left out, and helping emotionally (Binfet & Gaertner, 2015). While these students were much younger than the high school students in The Secret Kindness Project, it is apparent that no matter what age, kindness is recognizable to all students.

In his article, “Can Kindness Be Taught?” Ron Schachter argues that while children’s home environments have a huge impact on the kind of people they become, their educational environments do, too. He notes that many schools are beginning to realize that it is worth it to spend time on “soft” skills, such as empathy, and that even when educators are not thinking about the tragic consequences of bullying, they know that a classroom full of students who can relate to and understand one another can make a big difference, academically. He maintains that the teaching of trust and empathy takes time, patience, modeling, and practice, and he shares how several teachers are making use of outside programs focused on positive interpersonal behaviors, as well as their own resources and creativity, to help students cultivate kindness. As a result, Schachter strongly asserts that kindness can and must be taught (2011).

Unlike the teachers in Schachter’s article, there are others who argue that teaching kindness should not rely on outside agencies, but should be an integral part of the school’s curriculum taught by the teachers in the building. In “Teaching Kids to be Kind,” Adi Bloom (2013) discusses the increasing interest in teaching children about compassion, empathy, and kindness as a part of the curriculum, without connecting it to rewards. Bloom cites Marvin Berkowitz, professor of character education at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, who says that empathy starts developing early, and that the precursors of empathy can be observed in babies. However, Bloom notes that some children simply do not have the skills to display this empathy as no one has taught them to do simple acts of kindness, such as saying “thank you” or holding a door open for another person. This underscores the need for schools to undertake the teaching of kindness as an integral part of modern education.

Developing a habit of being kind increases children’s feelings of well being and happiness, reduces bullying, and improves friendships with increased popularity and acceptance among peers by teaching them to be givers of kindness. Happier children are also more likely to have higher academic achievement (Price-Mitchell, 2013). Internationally-renowned author and speaker Dr. Wayne Dyer explains that an act of kindness increases levels of serotonin, a natural chemical responsible for improving mood. This boost in happiness occurs not only in the giver and receiver of kindness, but also in anyone who witnesses it. This makes kindness a natural and powerful antidepressant (2013).