Over the past two weeks we have been talking about BAM (Being Awesome Montrosians)…well the title is new, but I’m thinking that it makes a pretty fun hashtag! #BAM (love it!). The foundation of Being Awesome Montrosians has three main pillars: Kindness, Generosity and Belonging. Over the next few weeks as a school we will continue to have discussions about what makes us awesome. As a class we have decided to track kindness. When we feel that something kind has happened to us we write it on a green slip and put it in the kind box and when something has happened that we feel is unkind we write in on a red slip and put it in the unkind box. At the beginning of the next week (this week it will be Tuesday) we will compare the two boxes to see if more kind or unkind things have happened at school throughout the week. Of course…our hopes is that the kind will heavily outweigh the unkind! We also can talk about what kind and unkind things have happened. Can we continue to make choices that others see as kind? Can we make changes to the unkind choices we’ve made and turn them into kind moments? Seeing and hearing what some people view as unkind will make us more aware of people’s kindness needs!

What I’ve noticed so far is…

We talked about how greeting people is a simple way to show kindness that can really help people have a great day! Before we talked about this I had a handful of students say good morning and have a nice evening or weekend to me on a regular basis. After a few days I’d say that number is up to about 3/4 of the class! I was away at training for a few days. Upon my return I was greeted by EVERYONE who walked in the door. It put an instant smile on my face!

My hopes…

I hope that we participate in random acts of kindness that range from greetings, to compliments, to helping without being asked, to helping anyone who needs it (not just our closest friends). Just wanting to be kind because we want to, not because we think someone is watching or to be able to say we filled up our kindness bucket is my main goal for the students in Room 123!

When we show kindness, we also show generosity and feel like we belong…all of that combined is pretty AWESOME!

I shared a story with the class about the feeling of belonging. When I taught at Montrose before I fell in love with the school and the community. It was sad for me when I had to leave (which is the life of a teacher on a term contract). I went to new schools and loved to teach there too, but I always knew that I wanted to come back to Montrose School one day because I felt like I belonged there. We are so lucky to have such a strong community of support. It is nice to remind ourselves of that so we never forget just how AWESOME we are 🙂

I can’t wait to share some kindness stories on Tuesday BECAUSE it’s cool to be kind!

#BAM

Danielle