World Kindness Day is an international holiday, launched in 1998, with the goal of promoting kindness throughout the world. It’s observed annually on November 13 as part of the World Kindness Movement.
Here are some resources related to kindness that you can use with your students—and some that you can use yourself!
For Your Students:
This article from English Leadership Quarterly shares how making students feel safe and accepted in our classrooms allows them to discover who they are and focus on the learning that they are there to do.
Our classrooms can be spaces where students learn the ways of hope to get through trauma, struggle, or stress.
This lesson plan challenges students to complete 100 acts of kindness. They brainstorm examples of kind acts they could do and discuss how to report acts of kindness they witness. They also select a service project to plan and complete together as a class. Students are encouraged to acknowledge kind acts by others through thank-you notes, and families are encouraged to help report acts of kindness.
Teaching compassion gives children the skills they need to translate their ideas into action. Here are some texts for read-alouds that can inspire us in that direction.
This post from Build Your Stack® shares picture books with strong characters that can help students grow academically, socially, and emotionally.
This lesson provides an opportunity for students to learn about situations of intolerance and discuss ways to move to a more ideal world in which acceptance is the norm using both picture books and poetry.
This lesson from ReadWriteThink.org aims to expose high school students to nonviolent options for conflict-resolution by reading and comparing a variety of texts from multiple authors.
For You:
Self-care for teachers matters because you matter! These tips can get you started.
Educators’ work can be extremely fulfilling, and it can also be emotionally exhausting. How do we give our best self to our family, our loved ones, our students, our community, our profession, and ourselves?
This article offers tips to teachers to help us all create a space inside our own lives—a space to attend to our physical, mental, spiritual, relationship, psychological self-care.
Teachers who practice these four skills thrive and grow and lead!
Take care and be kind!
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