Students Help to Create a Kinder and Gentler Community

This article in Independent School describes how a Missouri girls’ school encouraged students to define what a “community of kindness” would look like. Grade 5-8 students came up with the following maxims:

• Look at things from others’ point of view – stand in their shoes.
• Avoid the drama! NO RUMORS!
• Don’t use nicknames unless someone tells you it’s okay to use them.
• If you have hurt someone, apologize with sincerity rather than offering a casual “sorry” and moving on.
• Lose the sarcasm.
• Listen more, talk less.
• Let your friends make new friends.
• Don’t be a bystander.
• Eliminate the phrase “just kidding” from your vocabulary.

“Knowing that kids who are deaf to adult advice are much more likely to listen to their peers,” says principal John Carpenter, “we wanted to give them the opportunity to frame their own expectations to increase the likelihood of their buy-in to the final results. Schools often err in relying on prepackaged, off-the-shelf programs that feel canned and contrived and lack the organic qualities germane to the host institution.” 

A year later, faculty members report that students have embraced the community of kindness maxims and quote them when unkind behaviors occur. “More than anything else,” says Carpenter, “it is the inclusion of this phrase in our middle schoolers’ vocabulary that tells us that we have succeeded in penetrating the student culture of our school.” 

“The Reporter: Creating a Community of Kindness at School” in Independent School, Spring 2014 (Vol. 73, #3, p. 8), www.independentschool.org 

From the Marshall Memo #528