Central Elementary School principal Denise Pearl identified bullying and student safety as issues that needed fixing in her Hoquiam school. So, when a nationwide program to emphasize kindness caught her eye, she began employing it to create a more welcoming atmosphere.
Wonder, a 2012 children’s novel about a boy with facial differences, by R.J. Palacio, now a movie currently in theaters, has inspired schools across the country to join the Certified Kind Classroom Challenge. It gives students incentives to do random acts of kindness each day, with each one counted by dropping a marble in a jar. The marbles are then counted at the end of each month and compared among the 10 classrooms at Central Elementary. The one with the most is given a “Certified Kind” classroom banner and entered in a national contest with a chance to win a $500 donation for the school to use for a local charity and money for a pizza party.
Pearl decided to join the challenge at the beginning of November after being concerned about how bullying or fear of safety was affecting students’ learning at the school, and saw the Kind Classroom Challenge as a great way to combat that.
“Each year we emphasize positive behavior expectations, and this year we added kindness, because we’re seeing such a need for kids to know how to treat each other,” she said. “Especially in Hoquiam, our social and emotional learning impacts their academics, and if they come to school not feeling safe, secure and valued, they’re not going to get to those academics. This is a way to value each other and make each other safe.”
This past Monday, all 245 students from the school were taken to see the movie version of “Wonder” at SouthShore Mall Cinemas. Some students were just excited to be seeing a movie in a theater for the first time. The story is about a boy born with facial differences, who then has to deal with various bullies at school and the fear that other kids won’t accept him for his appearance. Most of the teachers are also reading the book version to students, because, as Pearl says, the story reinforces positive behavior and aspirations for their students.
“There’s so many characters that kids can connect to, and that’s been our focus every morning on announcements, is who do you aspire to be?”
Some of the 125 good deeds done so far include organizing a Thanksgiving meal for a needy family, helping other students with their homework and donating clothes to those who need it. Even though most of the deeds have been small in scale so far, Pearl said it’s already creating a big improvement in overall student interactions.
“We haven’t had any big acts yet, but already we see a difference in the culture of the school,” she said.
Now, the school’s walls are lined with students collages and art projects about what kindness means to them and what precepts kind people live by, and the school takes a moment each morning to recognize one student’s act of kindness by announcing it over the intercom.
In addition to the marbles for kindness challenge, the “Wonder” website also offered other incentives, such as an exclusive early viewing of the movie for one classroom that identifies what precepts students live by on a daily basis to be a kind person. And while Pearl entered the school in that and didn’t win, they did receive helpful donations in the process for copies of the book and go see the movie.
Even though the national deadline to win the Certified Kind banner ends this month, Pearl said they would continue to participate in the marble jar system and continue to recognize students doing good deeds.
