Growing Kindness Through Service and Connection
At Saint Francis of Assisi School in Concord, California, kindness grows in a community where students know one another across ages and learn early that caring for others is part of everyday school life. The school is home to roughly 300 students from junior kindergarten through eighth grade, drawing families from many backgrounds and neighborhoods. Some students travel a long way to get there, and others live just around the corner. Together, they make up a school where service, respect, and connection are woven through the day.
Teacher and Kindness Captain Emily Geislinger, now in her eleventh year of teaching, focuses on helping students think about how their words land, especially in the upper grades, where jokes do not always come across the same way to everyone. Through Teach Kindness lessons such as Good and Bad Teasing, ART of Apology, and How to Be an Active Listener, students practice speaking honestly, listening carefully, and repairing harm when something goes wrong. “They did not try to skirt around anything,” she says. “They made it clear: this is what it is, and this is how people should be treated.”
Service is woven throughout the school at every grade level. Eighth graders volunteer weekly at a local food distribution center, bagging food and bringing it out to cars. Student council leads schoolwide efforts to support local causes. During a Thanksgiving drive, the entire school united to assemble meal boxes for local families in need. One eighth grader noticed that some items were damaged or missing, taking the initiative to go to the store that evening to ensure every box was complete.
Students also build relationships across grade levels through buddy classes, where older and younger students spend time together reading and working on activities. Geislinger sees the effect on her eighth graders. “It helps ground them,” she says. “They connect with that sense of joy the younger students bring.”
Staff have also built on the Teach Kindness lessons in their own ways, from a schoolwide kindness chain filled with student commitments to fifth graders writing appreciation notes to teachers they do not normally interact with. Geislinger says the work is ongoing. “We’re growing in it every day.”