The Importance of Focusing on Kindness

For years, schools have focused on character education and teaching students why they believe certain traits will help them in life.

In recent years, we’ve even taken a more intentional approach to bullying prevention and have incorporated those themes into regular classroom lessons as well. But with more attention on overall wellness and social and emotional learning being promoted, I love the idea of making kindness a priority.

Focusing on being kind, may not be flashy, but there’s no doubt that it’s always the right choice, whether you’re thinking about conflict resolution, building relationships or even self-care. The idea is to help kids understand that kindness is powerful, cool and something that they can fully control. The challenge is that kindness is one of those abstract concepts that we sometimes assume kids understand but that in theory, they may actually need some help making simple and practical.

I encourage the schools I work with to consider all the ways they can make kindness and prosocial skills a daily and consistent topic of conversation. There are so many ways to do this from sharing inspiring videos like the one below to having a kindness counting challenge.

I love the simple small group activity that Counselor Keri includes on her blog about the The Ripple effects of Kindness so much that I included it in my School Based Session Planner along with other ideas to help you drive home the ideas of kindness, you can also check out the spirit week style Random Acts of Kindness Challenge week kit which includes prompts, newsletter articles and a printable list of kind activities that kids can do to amplify the kindness on their own.