I’m personally devastated to know discrimination, intolerance, and hostility are so prevalent in America’s schools. It’s unacceptable.
Students simply cannot learn and succeed if they are being harassed, bullied, or unnecessarily suspended.
Recent research demonstrates how schools that intentionally and systematically teach and foster kindness enhance students’ sense of safety, support, and acceptance. As a result, more students succeed in school and in life.
So Stand for Children – along with a growing coalition of leading education organizations, distinguished educators, and acclaimed researchers – is launching the Kindness Challenge, to ensure middle school is a place where kindness is commonplace, where meanness and hostility reach an all-time low, and where empathetic approaches to student behavior reduce unnecessary suspensions.
Through a series of classroom activities and school-wide events, students will practice kind behaviors, such as accepting differences and active listening, and teachers and administrators will foster and celebrate kindness.
The Kindness Challenge is a powerful, common sense solution to some of schools’ and society’s biggest challenges. At a time when meanness is becoming disturbingly acceptable, let’swork together to make kindness the norm for every student in every school in America.