last year i started a tradition in the nugget classroom during the month of february.
each day, when a child did something kind for another person, they wrote it down on a small paper heart. we taped the hearts to the wall outside our classroom to share with our school family and encourage them to act in love. this year we did it again and i'm telling you, the hearts of these kids simply astound me. at the end of last week i read a book to them by jacqueline woodson called "each kindness." this book was particularly gripping for me because it seeks to show a different angle about acting kindly towards others. every day i tell my kids, "you can choose to be kind or you can choose to be unkind...but whatever you choose you can never take back." the story talks about a little girl who comes to a new school. the narrator, another little girl, talks about the many opportunities she had to be kind but never acted upon. eventually, the new little girl moves away, leaving the narrator wondering about all the wasted opportunities she had to share kindness. see, usually we get the chance to make up for our acts of unkindness. we see the co-worker with whom we were short. we run into the family member to whom we could have been more polite. we live with our kids to whom we can show more patience in the future. essentially: we usually get second chances when it comes to kindness. but this isn't always the case. you can't take back what you said to the direct tv guy on the phone. you can't back up the car in the starbucks drive-thru to apologize for being rude. and as in the case of "each kindness," sometimes the person you were "meaning" to be kind to suddenly moves away. all that little girl's good intentions meant nothing to the little girl who moved away because she never ACTED on them. love does things. kindness requires action. it can be humbling, frustrating, and downright difficult to be kind sometimes but the people who drive us the craziest are oftentimes the people who need our kindness the most. when was the last time someone was blown away by your kindness? your compassion? your humility? when was the last time someone was blow away by your pride? your stubborn nature? your temper? when we show one small act of kindness, it ripples out further than we can ever imagine. after reading the book on friday i took the nuggets outside where we each picked out a small smooth stone. when we came back in i called each child over to me where i had a big bowl of water. i asked the child what kind thing they did and then had them drop their stone into the water. the ripples spread out to the very edges of the bowl. "this is what your kindness does," i said. "it goes on and on and on." the world tells my kids people who look different or think differently than they do are bad and they need to either fear them or be unkind to them WRONG. in our classroom you don't need to compromise your convictions to be compassionate. jesus teaches us to be gracious and kind just as he was. i'm proud to say my kids got it right this february. and i couldn't be more tickled. with love, ld
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