Teaching kindness in my classroom is always a goal of mine. I became a teacher to help create good people. To be honest it’s sometimes a challenge for me to push academic rigger over developing quality relationships in my classroom. This strategy may not always be so good on state tests, but it maybe good for our world. Helping shape humans that care about themselves and each other is kind of it for me. (You can read about my classroom kindness kit here!) As some of you may know by now, I love sneaking character building content into academics anywhere I can (you can read about more ways I do this with early elementary students and with my older students too!). 

Resources forCharacter Building

I created a series of character building quick write prompts that are meant to challenge students to respond to questions about growth mindset, college readiness, diversity, behavior at school and thankfulness in short fifteen minute daily writing sessions. It is always my hope to use their responses as entry tickets into more meaningful conversations. Learning this background information about my students helps me celebrate who they are, where they come from, and where they want to go. It reduces my urge to push my students down the paths that I think would be best for them and helps me support them in reaching their own goals.   

And then, there is kindness. I could talk about being kind with my students all day. Kind is what we need more of in schools, in homes, and in communities. I infuse kindness into my reading comprehension groups and into my vocabulary word of the week. I have used kindness as theme for my classroom. We have a kindness word wall and classroom posters. It is a part of the fabric of our classroom community. I want to embed a universal language of kindness in my room. 

As I foster relationships between students it has been helpful to have a structured way to approach personal and sometimes difficult topics. The outcome has been a kinder, more safe learning environment where students feel comfortable taking chances. I would love to hear how you infuse character building conversations into your classroom!