I remember when I was aged about 10 going to visit an older lady with my mum in Weston-super-Mare where we lived. Her name was Marjorie, she was 82 and she had no family living near her and few, if any, visitors.
We used to take her some food, clean a little for her and generally look after her and I always remember the glow I used to feel after one of our visits because I knew that we’d helped her. Our visits weren’t just an act of kindness on our part. I loved hearing her stories and gained a great deal of warmth and feel-good emotions from our visits.
When we were looking at ways to mark Anti-bullying Week in Junior School, we could have focused on the negative actions that cause anxiety in children, but instead we decided to focus on the positives. We saw learning about kindness and compassion as being a good way to foster the positive behaviour that is part of our warm and inclusive school.
Scientific studies have shown there are many benefits, both physically and emotionally, of being kind. So we set up our Random Acts of Kindness post box so that the children could write about their own acts of kindness they’d carried out.
As we’d hoped, the acts of kindness proved to be contagious. The children were eager to tell me about the many ways they’d been kind to others and you could see how even the smallest gesture could have a big impact on the recipient.
A Year 5 girl said that another pupil had helped her with her revision which made her feel thankful and special. A Year 4 pupil said she’d made new friends after being invited to join in a game with others she wouldn’t normally play with, and a Year 6 pupil said they’d felt happy and relieved after getting help with coding a game from a friend in a computing class.
The staff got involved too. They baked for each other, they shared sweets and chocolates and they covered playtime duties just to be kind and to give colleagues a break.
My random act of kindness was to make one of my teachers a cup of coffee and give out some chocolate. I think she may have guessed however when I disturbed her maths lesson!
Random acts of kindness are something we could all do – no matter how old we are or where we work. How would you spend yours?
“When we were looking at ways to mark Anti-bullying Week in Junior School, we could have focused on the negative actions that cause anxiety in children, but instead we decided to focus on the positives.
We saw learning about kindness and compassion as being a good way to foster the positive behaviour that is part of our warm and inclusive school.”
Be Social!