Riverhead Elementary Schools Participate in 'Great Kindness Challenge'

Photos courtesy of Riverhead Central School District

The “Peacekeepers“, student leaders at Roanoke Avenue and Phillips Avenue Elementary Schools organized by CAP social worker Shannon Kutner, extended a challenge to all the schools in the district to participate in the Great Kindness Challenge this year, and they all agreed.

In response to the challenge, there are a number of events going on at all of the Riverhead District’s schools.

The Great Kindness Challenge is a weeklong event that focuses on creating a culture of kindness by challenging children to be kind to one another.

The challenge is meant to raise awareness about how important kindness is to the emotional welfare of each person in school, at home and in the community at large.

Riley Avenue Elementary’s student council and their advisor, art teacher Melissa Haupt, are using the book Have You Filled a Bucket Today to encourage Riley students to actively engage in acts of kindness.

The student council members are acting as a Bucket Brigade by traveling to each classroom to read the ‘Bucket’ book to each class.

Next, the Bucket Brigade encouraged each student to write a short note to someone as an act of kindness and place it in the bucket.

One girl wrote a note to the little girl sitting next to her expressing how much she liked her.

Another student wrote a note to her mom telling her that she was a “great mom”.

Riley teacher Lauren McDonald read her note to her class, “I think you are a one of the best classes I have ever had.”

She went on to commend her students for making posters, which they hung in the hallways, thanking the custodians for all their hard work shoveling after the last big storm that dumped over two feet of snow on Riverhead.