FARMINGTON – The W.G. Mallet School’s STAR student program is placing a special emphasis on the “S”—showing kindness— with its brand new Chain of Kindness.
Stemming from the Positive Behavioral Intervention and Supports committee, the STAR student program recognizes and celebrates students for their positive behaviors, and the Chain of Kindness recognizes daily acts of kindness, whether that’s students helping one another, helping teachers or just seeing things that need to be done and taking responsibility.
“What we want kids to do is focus on looking at what other people are doing that is something helpful, something positive, something that makes our school a better place because it’s really easy for kids to notice what other kids are doing wrong and want to report that…so that can become the overarching effort,” Tracy Williams, principal of the Mallet School, said. “This is trying to switch that up.”
The acts of kindness are written on a colorful piece of paper, some being read aloud with morning announcements, and added to the paper chain in the hallway. The goal is to cover a certain distance and create a visual representation to see how far kindness can go. Williams also stated that the practice trains the eye to see more of the positive things going on around both students and faculty.
Morgan Leso, the school’s guidance counselor, says that adding links to the chain is for anyone that witnesses a kind act, and that the idea came in response to World Kindness Day.
“A lot of other things can fall into place when people are showing kindness…and I think that we were feeling
inspired,” Leso said.
One recent big act of kindness came from second-grader Fletcher Reynolds.
“My friend lost his mask. After we found it, we saw a lot of masks, so we gave him his mask and then we got gloves and went back,” Reynolds said.
After finding his friend’s mask and returning it, he returned to the Mallet School playground with his mom to pick up all the lost and discarded masks on the ground—a total of thirty-two masks. He brought the washable masks to the lost and found box at school and made posters with images of all the disposable masks he found to show his fellow students with the hope of raising awareness in order to keep the playground clean.
Reynolds plans to keep his eyes peeled in case masks need to be picked up again. He has considered starting a club with names like “The Maskilators” and “The Mask Police” to get his friends involved. He said this act of kindness made him feel happy.
“I was super proud of him; it’s nice to see him want to do that,” his mom said. “He’s feeling really proud of himself and it’s carrying forward at home.”
