Elementary Students Issue Kindness Challenge

Fifth graders at Beverly’s Shore Country Day School called on their fellow students to join in the worldwide Great Kindness Challenge, one week devoted to performing as many acts of kindness as possible on campus and in the community. Using a checklist of 50 kind acts - such as reading to a younger child, making a new friend, or writing a thank-you note - students accept the challenge and prove that kindness is strength.

Created by the organization Kids for Peace, the Challenge runs January 25 - 29. Currently, well over 4,000,000 students in close to 7,000 schools all over the world have registered for this event. While Shore is already known as a kind and supportive community for families and children ages pre-k through ninth grade, participating in the challenge will make kindness a true focus in and around campus for the week.

Explains Lower School Dean of Students and fourth grade teacher Sean Melia, “Shore is a place that is oozing with kind acts. Slowing down to recognize them, or even notice them at all, can be hard. The Great Kindness Challenge is a great opportunity to do that.” Melia helped create the “Caught in the Act” program earlier this year to further underscore the importance of acts of kindness at Shore, and the school is known for its emphasis on compassion and giving back to the local community through initiatives such as a local day of service and holiday gift drive.

Kindness - the first value recognized in Shore’s unique Community Code - is more than a behavioral aspiration at the school. Studies show that the experience of kindness actually changes the brain. “The good feelings that we experience when being kind are produced by endorphins,” writes school psychology expert Lisa Currie. “They activate areas of the brain that are associated with pleasure, social connection, and trust. These feelings of joyfulness are proven to be contagious, encouraging more kind behavior (also known as altruism) by the giver and recipient. Acts of kindness help us form connections with others which are reported to be a strong factor in increasing happiness.”

Kindness is critical in creating a sense of personal connectedness, ecouraging gratitude, and reducing stress - all important goals in building the kind of caring community that’s so characteristic of Shore’s culture.

According to Shore’s Lower School Head, Sara Knox, “In addition to completing acts of kindness from the checklist, we’re hoping that all homeroom classes will participate in a Door Decorating Challenge.”

Fifth graders will provide the parameters for this challenge, which asks each class to work together to come up with an idea for decorating their door with a kindness theme in mind. At the end of the week, they will assign superlative awards to each class. “It should be a lot of fun to work collaboratively and creatively on a project that includes all grade levels,” says Knox.