Last
Friday over 400 students at Manchester School in Windham celebrated kindness at
an assembly featuring skits, speeches and the introduction of a color run to
take place in the spring.
“The
best part was last year fourth grade students approached Mrs. Weatherbee to
start an anti-bullying club,” said principal Danielle Donnini. The team worked
to create the name Team Kindness and met at lunch recess to plan activities. The
group consists of approximately 30 fourth and fifth graders.
“It has evolved from September into today,”
said guidance counselor Jessica Weatherbee. “One little idea can turn into
something this huge,” she told the audience of fourth and fifth graders.
On
Friday, some of the team put on kindness skits showing how to be nice to someone
who gets tripped or drops their books.
The
whole week was dedicated to doing something to help others. “They want to
expand kindness throughout the whole school,” said Weatherbee. “We want to
create a culture of kindness in the building.”
The
whole school, led by the chorus, sang a kindness song about “reach out your
kind-hearted hand.” All of it part of The Great Kindness Challenge, an online
program that encourages schools to devote one week to performing as many acts
of kindness as possible, choosing from a 50 item checklist.
The items vary from smile at 25 people to walk a dog or cat.
The school also held a door contest on
way to show kindness. Many of the classrooms had interactive doors that had
quotes and special touches to show and give suggestions on ways to be kind. One
door was made to look like an iPhone with apps for kindness, for example
Kindness Watchers (Weight Watchers), Teamwork, KindFlix (Netflix), FriendBook
and InstaKind.
Student Adrianna Libby said her favorite
app was Stand up. “It’s about standing up for yourself.”
Donnini declared that everyone won the
contest because it’s all about kindness and everyone wins when it comes to
kindness.
Donnini quoted Ellen DeGeneres, “I just
think that kindness is something we should all have…We need more of that out
there.”
“This week reminded us just a little bit
about how we want to be,” said Weatherbee. During the week the students were
asked to bring in a food item for the Windham Food Pantry for the privilege of
breaking dress code and wearing a hat in school. With a two day notice the
school rallied and brought in 283 items to donate.
The also held themed dress up days like
“tied together with kindness” where kids wore curly ribbon and bow or neck
ties, “crazy for kindness” where they wore mismatched clothes and the “dreaming
of kindness” where the students wore pajamas.
The students made iMovie videos about
what kindness means to them and they continued talk about “creating a chain
reaction,” which they learned about in Rachel’s Challenge.
The Kindness Team has been meeting twice
a month and according to Weatherbee, “the students are teaching and guiding me”
about what they want to accomplish.
“I’ve seen so much kindness and I know
this is going to continue,” said vice principal Kristal Vargo-Ward.
Weatherbee also announced that Mrs.
Carle’s class will be organizing a color run as their Community Day project.
Manchester hosts a community day every year to celebrate each class doing a
year-long project to benefit something in the community. The color run will be
a one or two mile, untimed race. Weatherbee, Vargo-Ward and gifted and talented
teacher Jennifer Breton volunteered to demonstrate how the color run would
work, with students tossing a colored chalk-like substance on their white
shirts creating a colorful art piece. The color run is scheduled for April 10th.
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