During our May 5th, 2023 staff meeting, we met as a staff to discuss our thoughts, feelings and perceptions as to what extent our Kindness initiatives have impacted our students' learning and well-being this year and in the previous year. 

Both teaching staff and support staff met in heterogeneous groups to brainstorm the kindness teaching opportunities at our school and to talk about how these opportunities impacted our students. 

The kindness initiatives brainstorm included:

Class lessons, and discussions of kindness stories read to students

Kindness cards

Kindness rocks

Morning announcements

Kindness umbrella common language - teachable moments throughout the school day

Family teams - explicit lessons taught by Grade 7s to the younger students and opportunities to practice

McMath leadership mornings - secondary students sharing monthly with our Grade 6/7 students about how small, brave acts of kindness make a huge difference in someone's life

The staff members then took turns sharing how one or more of these opportunities positively impacted our students' learning and well-being.  The highlights from this sharing were that having our Kindness umbrella school-wide common language was effective in teaching our students to be kind and was used for teachable moments at our school.  Staff included a variety of examples of how the opportunities above made a positive difference in our students' lives.

Consensus for now was that teaching about Kindness is a foundational teaching for our students be be good citizens now and in the future and we should continue to make it our focus.