Tell Everyone: Kindness is Cool! (?)

The other day, I overheard some women talking as I was leaving the gym. They must have been teachers as well because they were talking about some things that were happening at their school. More specifically, things that were happening with their middle school students. These incidents sounded pretty familiar to me as a middle school teacher myself. Their conversation sounded a lot like those I have with my colleagues regularly. We are asking ourselves a lot these days: How do we help to instill the lessons of kindness that are easy to teach to younger kids, without the preteens and teens rolling their eyes and disengaging? In other words, how do we make Kindness cool again?

 

Perspective Taking

The fact is that when it comes down to it, the way that we treat others, and our ability to understand the way others feel, is paramount to the human experience. In a world where success is often associated with cruel and deceitful practices and narrow viewpoints, it is more important than ever to remind our children and our students that it IS cool to be kind.  The ability to put yourself in another’s shoes helps to make better decisions, especially when they are entrenched in peer pressure. The social-emotional development of our students has to be at the forefront of our curriculum, woven through everything we teach and modeled through everything we do. Read this great article below to learn a little more about these ideas and some different ways you can help plant the kindness seeds and nurture them as they grow!

Empathy is Tough to Teach, But Is One Of the Most Important Life Lessons